Unless it turns out that their skeletons are made of actual steel, SHEAFS couldn't be tied any closer to their hometown of Sheffield – the band is named after the river which flows through the city and which gave it its name, their spiky punk-rock barrelling forward as relentlessly as the industry it spent centuries powering.
And just as the River Sheaf spends most of its time underground, so the band's music seems to take its inspiration from the gutter – but, as Oscar Wilde would have it, they are staring up at the stars.
Vox Pop is the band's debut EP, and distils the raw promise shown on early singles 'Mind Pollution' and 'This is Not a Protest' into five slick tracks which won't be tearing up trees but which feed into the woke-punk movement currently soundtracking 2020. Musically Vox Pop is millennial punk-by-numbers but, that said, the band's lyrics – delivered with bona fide spit and swagger by the impressive Lawrence Feenstra – reflect the city's status as a reliable left-wing stronghold.
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Neatly sidestepping tedious preaching, the band make genuinely shrewd observations; "we're getting close to 8 billion people, and even now we still can't seem to get it right" is the opening line on first (and best) track 'Thinking Out Loud', while despite falling flat with derivative riffing 'Care Less' urges righteous individuality with a refrain of "you've got to care less about what they say". This comes via the surprising anti-consumerist 'Shopping' which sees Feenstra get strangely near Zack de la Rocha's impassioned RATM bark – totally unexpected.
On a corner of Sheaf Street in central Steel City some water-level graffiti asks, 'Is the river really beautiful or is it just the gradient of the land?'. This question can equally be asked of the band – is their music really that good, or is it the political landscape and their carefully-crafted lyrics which gives it the edge? How SHEAFS would stand up in a happier world is a question we sadly may never know the answer to, so for now enjoy their intelligent take on a genre at risk of buckling under its own self-importance.
Words - Joe Ponting
SHEAFS official
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SHEAFS live...
Wednesday 4th March – London, Grace
Friday 6th March – Manchester, Gullivers
Saturday 7th March – Nottingham, Bodega
Thursday 12th March – Sheffield, Cafe Totem