Something of a third-string pop-punk supergroup, the Shop Fronts are a Brooklyn band led by former members of two minor outfits, Jami Wolf of
the Zodiac Killers, and Alessandra of the Tie Reds. Despite the relative lack of hipster pedigree, the Shop Fronts' debut album is a refreshing blast of old-school pop-punk very much in the tradition of the earliest American hardcore acts, with shouty male-female vocals over two-minute, two-chord tunes that manage a certain level of tunefulness among the high-velocity rhythms and deliberately amateurish playing. There is nothing whatsoever new or different about the Shop Fronts, but the quartet do their thing with more than enough enthusiasm for all but the most churlish fans of the style to overlook the way that parts of "Runaround" sound almost exactly like the
Buzzcocks' "Just Lust," or the obvious influences of bands like
the Dickies on "I Wanna Be Free." An utterly unpretentious and hugely fun debut,
The Shop Fronts is a brief but furious trawl through punk rock history. ~ Stewart Mason