Shovels

***BACK IN STOCK!!! US tour begins May 23, 2015. SHOVELS come charging out of the Homeless stable as a band in absolute peak condition. Their tight rhythms and challenging lyrics, soaked with brash overdriven guitar, provide a solid foundation for the band’s concise compositional skills. This is a record that bursts through the white noise generated by ephemeral rock trendiness. It gallops with forward surging momentum and bristles with seductive tension. Shovels are masters of the art of knowing when to conspiratorially whisper and when to bludgeon with full force. The eight tracks on this record tear through a spectrum of moods. Slow burning numbers such as “Clyde,” “Arm Arm Leg” and “Expire” play out like omens of tangible portent whilst “MB Jacket,” “Multiple Farrow” and “Grenoble” explode with energy, all channeled into a tightly focused beam. Shovels are MICHAEL BEACH (guitar and vocals), ADAM CAMILLERI (bass), and PETER WARDEN (drums). They formed in 2013 with members split between Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, California. Their self-titled debut is presented proudly by Homeless Records. Edition of 350 copies.  
 
 
"Seeing the band – Michael Beach, an American guy who’s associated with a number of Australian acts, on guitar and vocals, with a Melbourne-based rhythm section (bassist Adam Camilleri, drummer Peter Warden) – was all the convincing I needed, though. They perform to almost exactly the kind of band ideal held up by Bitch Magnet’s Jon Fine in his well-worth-reading book Your Band Sucks as an example of what music could’ve become if everyone got on board: non-pop-oriented rock, as it might be played with hammers and sledges, trudging uphill in a pyrrhic instrumental victory; lyrics delivered as a great pronouncement, or re-enactment of history; mechanics as swing. They were crushingly loud and I wondered at the end of the set what someone had to do in a previous life to be punished by reincarnation as Warden’s drumkit, beaten to the point where I thought it would straight up collapse. The somewhat compressed nature of the recording on this album is the only detractor. I hope they make another record, I hope they come back, and I hope next time you get to see them play, too. Absolutely professional demolition, and they cleaned up too.”—Doug Mosurock