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East London Punk Trio Shopping Premieres “Why Wait?”

A retro-sounding track with 21st century themes.

July 09, 2015

On their new song, East London post-punk purists Shopping pose three questions, each yelped four times in two minutes: why wait? why choose? and why pay? The track's bright, sped-up guitar melody is played one note at a time over rolling dance-floor drums and a plucky bass line. It's structurally simple but thematically knotty: the band says it's inspired by the "instant gratification of the internet age," a decidedly contemporary plot for a track that sounds yanked from another era entirely. Bassist Billy Easter wrote a longer response that's too good to not include in full:

“The hyperactivity of the song comes from the kind of fidgety feeling you get when you feel like you wanna watch three YouTube videos at once whilst talking to someone and reading an email while also watching a .gif and riding a bus. It's a song about wanting to break out of, but also being a product of a consumerist, globalized, hyperactive and impatient world - being consumed by a system whilst also harboring an intense desire to freak out and consume everything at once - an insatiable desire to satisfy every greedy whim; to go on some kind of crazed shopping spree then throw it all into the river.”

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The track will appear on the trio's new full-length, Why Choose, which drops October 2nd on English indie label FatCat Records.