It's not very often that we get to hear great music come out of the UK anymore, so when bands like the Real Losers and Black Time broke loose from the stagnant mold a few years ago, it really seemed like something was afoot, and I'm truly glad we were lucky to be in on it. The next festering sore to attach itself to the rock'n roll minions of note are Sheffield's brightest stars, the Hipshakes. In the last year or so, they have bowled over studios with such a brash and reckless stab at "recording," that it's unsafe to listen to it while nursing or recovering from any sort of trauma without serious injury. With rhythms and breaks that come and go so fast, and blasted with enough adrenaline and gravel to knock out all your teeth at once, their previous singles on Slovenly, Fistful of Records, and Goner only hinted at their true potential to burn. We're talking almost Los Assdraggers levels of speed here, and done with a careless finesse that always reminds you that it's so much harder than it sounds to make this kind of masterpiece. Three kids with time to waste, beer to drink, and faces to smash is always going to be a great formula, and this debut album on Slovenly will stand as one of the year's best, undoubtedly. Cleverly incorporating bits and pieces of all the right blown-out sounds of the masters mashed into one furious ball of orchestrated noise, it still manages to feel loose and uncalculated while simultaneously hovering precariously over the soft parts of your skull. With help from the Real Losers' esteemed guitarist, The Hand, lending stray squirts of guitar to the impetuous mix, this long-player is a living, breathing party waiting to happen, and it's going nowhere but straight up your ass and out of your eye-sockets before you even have a choice in the matter. Just like their contemporaries the Black Lips, they have their whole lives ahead of them, so hopefully these are only the first spurts of unrequited love we'll be hearing from these British problem children. Even the barely recognizable and disasterous cover versions of staples "Born To Lose" and "Summertime Blues" are Hipshaken beyond compare, and fully reinforce the fact that these guys are indeed doing exactly what they were put on earth to do, and on that note, all we need is MORE. Pick up their new album right HERE.
Check out a live video of the Hipshakes from Gonerfest 3 in 2006 courtesy of johnnyguitar right here...
