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.