It is a shame that we are only getting to covering SHAGGO now, since the Brooklyn group released their debut album Chores way back in June. But despite the band’s recent positive press and massive performances around Brooklyn and at SXSW, this article is better late than never. SHAGGO’s songs set fire to your heart in the winter cold just as they sent a chill down listeners’ spines in the sweltering summer heat. Any time is a good time for queer femme punk music, especially right now.
The name SHAGGO might seem familiar to real music trivia sickos, as the band took inspiration from The Shaggs, the 60s band made up of the Wiggins sisters that became known as “one of the worst bands of all time.” The story actually goes that some male friends of the band said they were like The Shaggs, and filled with spite, the band decided to embrace it instead of taking it as an insult. (Of course, The Shaggs were actually revolutionaries who were ahead of their time, and the writer of this article will stand by that opinion.)
Of course, SHAGGO sounds nothing like their namesake. A first listen to Chores might remind you of Sleater-Kinney, Babes In Toyland, or Veruca Salt. You would not be mistaken: SHAGGO calls Sleater-Kinney one of their biggest influences, and they take inspiration not just from other groups of the 90s and 2000s riot grrrl scene, but also other current riot grrrl bands who continue to shape the sound to this day.
Chores is chock full of the genre’s attitude as well as a sense of independence, having recorded this DIY gem of a debut in their friend’s basement. The album captures the anxiety of growing up, especially as queer people living a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and all of that energy explodes in each track. Each song has a slight comedic tilt – a few albums we know have a song called “Lost a Sock”, if any – but with the silliness comes serious songwriting.
Some of that songwriting comes from a musical upbringing. The opening track, “Big Trash Night,” was originally written by the dad of vocalist and guitarist Lucy Rinzler-Day. Likewise, the next song on the album, “Young Girls Need Entertainment,” was from Lucy’s mom. Both Lucy and co-founding member Carina Greenberg took those songs and reworked them into their current forms.
“Big Trash” is about the act of not only getting rid of what you no longer need, but making a big deal of cleaning house. Most of what SHAGGO lists in the bridge of the song relates to your average milquetoast dude: “Vinyl collection, joke explanation, fake meditation, Japan obsession… Your bad opinions in ugly fonts!” Continuing the railing against averageness, “Young Girls Need Entertainment” snarls against smothering manchildren and getting tied down to one: “Want us kneeling, want us under
wanna own, infantilize us/If you break u,s then you buy us/Started spitting up your narrative, not swallowing it whole”.
“Minor League” showcases the band couching deeper meaning in comedic metaphors, stemming from a story about a surreal experience Carina had at a minor league baseball game. The song references the Brooklyn Cyclones, Mike Piazza, a potentially bisexual man eating a hotdog, and a woman falling down the stairs and then giving birth to a boy (“He’s gonna be an accountant some day!”) The song uses the minor league game as a symbol for both the meaninglessness of life (“That’s minor league/And nothing matters, nothing matters/Don’t swim too deep”) and the importance of its little moments (“For unto us a child is born, and he was born at the minor league baseball game!”)
“My House” came from a song Lucy wrote when she was 19 about her freshman year friend group excluding her, using the house as a metaphor for a place within built on trust. Although the track differs from its original version, Lucy’s loud repetition of “I let you stay at my house!” at the end is both a literal exclamation and a metaphorical one, cursing out the ex-friends who sullied her place of trust after she let them in.
The songs about disillusion continue with “Lost A Sock (Need A Friend)”, where something as simple as laundry seems daunting and lonely (“I lost a sock, I need a friend, I don’t know who to call on my own/Thought I would find you at the end, but now I’m lost in my own home”). But sometimes needing someone doesn’t go as planned: SHAGGO waxes about relationships that get weird on “I Wanted Fun”, singing to male partners who can’t manage a normal relationship either due to lovebombing (“You throw affection like confetti/It’s so impossible to catch”) or rushing into things (“I only want you for the weekend, you want to meet all of my friends/You want to take me on vacation, when I had just wanted to dance”). There’s also the damning of the emotionally unavailable performative male, which is a very funny but striking line: “Guess you’re too busy respecting women to respond to MY TEXT!” (Note: This is how the lyrics are capitalized in the official Bandcamp release.)
Chores ends with “City MD”, a homage to NYC’s urgent care network, which ties a story Lucy heard about a friend getting dust in their eye and turning it into a breakup song: “Here I am stuck deep in your bullshit, with this dust still deep inside my eye! Get me to a City MD now, think this time I might finally see the light.” The track slows things down but doesn’t lose any energy, making for a fitting musical end to the album.
On their debut album, SHAGGO catalogs all the emotions that go into the little things that drag life down for young people, especially queer femme folks dealing with shitty romance, mental health, bad friends, and awkward situations that cloud reason. Of course, as the title suggests, they also wax a little bit about chores. But on Chores, SHAGGO also surge forth with catharsis, releasing frustration into relatable punk tracks that help to take out the trash, whether it’s in your bedroom or in your head. And while it may feel hard to do that chore sometimes, it’s absolutely necessary.
(PS: This writer would like to thank SHAGGO for representing the New York Mets organization on their album via “Minor League”.)
Written by Will Sisskind
