Shux

Reviews

Shux Chonks Missing cassette

SHUX’s “(I Don’t Wanna) Indoor Toilet” was one of the gold nuggets panned out from the sediment of Lumpy Records’ 2017 Horrendous New Wave LP comp, a neo-Red Snerts rhythm-machine-propelled weirdo flip-out with bratty femme vocals taking Big Plumbing to task—it resurfaced on a demo the following year with three more originals and a cover of DEVO’s “Goo Goo Itch,” but that was the last we’d heard from SHUX until now. Chonks Missing was recorded with a human drummer in 2019 and apparently intended for a 7” release that never came to pass, with fleshed-out, full-band takes on the non-DEVO demo material and two raging new tracks (“Milk Sick” and “Split Merengue”) that hit more of a Yes L.A./Dangerhouse target than anything Mothersbaugh-indebted. Vocalist Cara Murphy-Smith hiccups KLEENEX-by-way-of-Su-Tissue-style over a deliriously ping-ponging bass line in “Not a Not Nazi” (“I’m not saying you’re a Nazi / But you’re not a not Nazi,” what a line), while the feral Midwestern punk snot of “Wolfman’s Eyeballs” is like a St. Louis response to what CB RADIO GORGEOUS has been up to recently a few hours north in Chicago, and “No No Tony” snakes along in a rhythmic rumble of mounting desperation. Only 25 copies of this exist, don’t sleep.