Three years later Shutups have released their debut album, Everyday I’m Less Zen, a visceral mix of angular punk and crunchy 90s-inspired indie rock that sounds at once ferocious and joyfully cathartic. It’s a record preoccupied with both weakness and resilience, which, far from being paradox, sounds relatable, sounds real.

From the opening of ‘that’s a long time to be on fire’, it’s clear that Shutups don’t intend to mope around. The record throws you right into the deep end of tumultuous punk rock, defiant yelled vocals and an exhilarating rush of instrumentation. But it’s ‘Jaywalk Over Me’ that perhaps introduces the album the best, a song that slides between louder punk moments and slower, slacker-style sections. Thematically, it captures the album’s spirit too, that ennui that is all too familiar in the twenty-first century West. “Dressed all in black like your dad’s heart attack,” sings Hadley, in one moment of many where he combines sardonic humour with the emotional and psychological burdens of day-to-day life.

There are shades of No Age on ‘Yellowjacket’, breakneck guitar and wryly desperate lyrics (“Never cut my hair without regret / clipped off the ends and I’m upset”), while ‘Smile’ confronts that numb, dead-behind-glazed-eyes feeling, of staying at home for days on end and losing connection with everyone but cable news.

“I laugh it off ’till I smile inside”

The real triumph of Everyday I’m Less Zen is how Shutups blaze through all the angst and anxiety, which proves a catharsis for both band and listener. Chiefly important in this is the wild and powerful percussion. “I’m completely untrained musically, but I’m also kind of this impressionable canvas which offers limitless opportunity,” drummer Mia explains “Quite the paradox. I also hit things really fucking hard which is the only way to move through trauma and mental shit I cannot express.” It’s a vital element of the record, adding real weight to proceedings. As producer Cody Voltato explains in a piece with Talkhouse,

“Tracking drums was my favorite. Mia destroyed them. I would be at odds with (co-engineers) Brent and Jarret because they wanted her to play softer. They weren’t wrong, it’s better for tracking, but I didn’t care. I wanted her to play it harder and louder. She would spill everything into that drum kit. Everything. That was what I cared about. And she delivered every time.”

This is evident across the record, from the clatter of ‘Apple Salad’ to the swaggering and spiky ‘Cement Hands’, the drums nail everything into place and generate the palpable sense of raw energy that drives the songs forward. The only slight deviation is closer ‘I Wanna Crash Classic Cars’, which for Shutups is something of a slow burner. Extending beyond nine minutes, the song is thick with a strange kind of anaesthetised frenzy, Hadley clawing at his empty insides with a heavy-lidded nihilism, like the protagonist of a Tyrant novel. Despite all that it sounds almost wistful, and proves to be a fitting end to an album that remains unpredictable to the last.

Photo by Nate Gilchrest

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