A4 zine with transparent orange single sided flexi disc.Live photographs, illustrations, collaged imagery, flyers and narrative across 16 pages.Our take: When I write about records for Sorry State I focus on the music, sometimes mentioning whether the artwork feels stylistically consonant or dissonant with the sound. I also try to mention when a release’s physical packaging is noteworthy since we love and care about physical media here. Much of the time, a release’s packaging can feel like an afterthought, at best providing appropriate window dressing for sounds that have received far more creative energy. This package, though, throws that dynamic on its head. If you look at this as an elaborately packaged one song flexi, it seems pretty silly. The Shits’ Brainbombs-esque track here is cool, but the zine that houses and accompanies the flexi feels much more labored over. It’s a 16-page, A4-sized zine that’s printed full bleed and looks stunning. While the zine incorporates live shots of the band, flyers for their gigs, and lyrics and artwork for the accompanying track, it devotes more space to collages and poetry (lyrics?) whose connection to the Shits (whose name, not coincidentally, isn’t even on the cover) is unclear. The zine is beautiful, and the song is cool, but what sticks with me here is the inventiveness of the entire concept.
