The debut three track EP, Other Conspiracies, from the raucous rising stars of Auld Reekie, post-punk noiseniks, Shinlifter is out now. Other Conspiracies kicks off with Close Encounters, a song that has the band high on adrenaline, musically launching themselves headlong at your jugular with a furious urgency, the lyrics spat out rant-like with an unbridled venom. The driving fuzzy guitars change mid-song to sharp angular riffs that match the pointed lyrical barbs. I do hope you’ve never got on the wrong side of vocalist Olivia Furey, as you’re definitely on her shitlist, “I want to list them name by name from primary school to the present day.”
There is a school of thought that says there is no such thing as bad publicity, perhaps that is what the subject of the second track, simply titled Brewdog, will be praying is true. The brewer has been constantly cloaked in the mire of controversy, the whole of which this song succinctly covers in just over five minutes. The low level riffing and thunderous drums underline the odious disgust in the delivery of the lyrics, you can almost feel the bitter antipathy. Just as you think they’ve put the boot in for the last time and the song fades out, the band come back swinging with a squall of jagged guitars to match the ire in the vocal delivery. If you still want to touch a Punk IPA or an Elvis Juice with a bargepole after this I’d be most surprised.
The EP is rounded off with graceful panache in the form of the epic Working Woman’s Blues, introduced by sporadic plucked guitars before the resonant bass kicks in paired with some dissonant riffing. Lyrically the first half of the song is taken from Dole Queue by poet Michael Hulse, paired musically with a deeply sonorous bass line and some sparsely complex riffing, together they carry a sense of foreboding, before they do eventually explode together in a melee of elegant chaos as vocalist Olivia questions the state of life in 21st Century Britain… “what will you spend your someone in today… what is this joke?”