A Posthumous Tribute to Shopping
The beloved UK DIY dance punks called it quits last summer
A few months ago, the UK band Shopping announced they were breaking up and released their final single. In the age of indefinite hiatuses and “taking a break, ttyl,” a band actually quitting for real, a band breaking up as a definitive statement, feels like an about-face from the culture of the day.
Rather than an open-ended way to keep their professional options available, instead of hitting the rather lucrative reunion circuit (whose window seems to be getting wider and wider for bands with shorter and shorter lifespans), rather than opening the failsafe latch that screams, “WE NEVER SAID WE BROKE UP, PLEASE BOOK US,” the air of finality around one of the last great quasi-popular British bands of their (admittedly slim-pickings) generation feels real. And sort of heavy. Not funereal, because let’s face it; if there’s anything the world is dramatically oversaturated with right now, it’s new music.
But, getting to brass tax, there are a lot of bad bands out there, and we now have one fewer of the great ones.
