This week’s news that the UK band Shriekback is readying their fourteenth album Why Anything? Why This? for release on May 25th has me traveling down the proverbial memory lane…Combining post-punk attitude with danceable beats and an industrial vibe, it was no accident that the group was huge in Chicago in the mid-eighties. I first heard “Nemesis” on a small college radio station in the Western suburbs, and as a gloomy high school student with an interest in poetry and keyboards, a luminous line like: “Big black nemesis, parthenogenesis/No one move a muscle as the dead come home” had me running for the dictionary and dreaming of my next visit to Medusa‘s–a three story dance club that somehow catered to an all-ages crowd. Not long after that came the band’s 1987 US tour stop at the Park West, and while not old enough yet to attend that, Chicago’s alternative-leaning radio station WXRT played the concert in full on their Big Beat radio show–hosted at that time by Johnny Mars and featuring two hours of hard to find Punk and New Wave. Recording the show on a cheap portable cassette player, the tape was one of my prized possessions. While Shriekback would eventually fall off my radar by the early-90’s, as I turned to heavier and harder listens, songs like “Hammerheads,” “Faded Flowers,” and “Nemesis” would go on to live in my musical subconscious.
Shriekback was started in 1980 by former XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews and ex-Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen, with Out On Blue Six guitarist Carl Marsh joining soon after. In 1983, the band added drummer Martyn Barker, and after several releases on Y Records, home to bands like The Slits, The Pop Group, and Maximum Joy, Shriekback would go on to release landmark albums like 1984’s Jam Science and 1985’s Oil and Gold on Arista, as well as 1986’s Big Night Music and 1988’s Go Bang! on Island Records. Despite a hiatus or two along the way, the band has remained active thru the years, and the group’s upcoming album finds them continuing to hone their craft and refine their sound. Why Anything? Why This? was written and produced by the band’s core trio, with Scott Firth (P.i.L) adding bass to some tracks, and longtime Shriekback regulars Wendy and Sarah Partridge once again contributing backing vocals.
On the track “And The Rain,” the band channels a blues-tinged, Americana vibe thru their trademark electro-rock set-up. Featuring slide guitar, keyboards, baritone vocals, and a host of World Music inspired percussive elements, the richly produced cut finds the band squarely focused on a diluvian apocalypse. The results are as haunting and catchy as ever, and prove Shriekback is still capable of delivering a stern but danceable warning to those brave enough to listen.
