Shrag – Life! Death! Prizes!

Shrag’s second album explodes into life with the panic inducing A Certain Violence, a post-punk bar-room brawl dragged along kicking and screaming by relentless guitar, and the ensuing tracks keep it just as sweaty. The B-52s Rock Lobster is reborn in the form of Stubborn or Bust, surf-pop guitar and grumbling bassline scoring a boy-girl call and answer both dizzying and thrilling, like a Ferris wheel rolled free from its axis.  

Unashamedly informed by new-wave and punk, Shrag channel everyone from Siouxsie Sioux to the Pixies and back again, while at the same time sounding very much of the moment. With jagged guitars and wide-mouthed, regional singing there is a lot they have in common with contemporaries Dananananaykroyd or Super Adventure Club. For all this, they remain an idosyncratic group, case in point being spoken word The Habit Creep. In the hands of another, a painfully art school misstep. Here, a genuinely sinister centrepiece. [Oisín Kealy]