22nd of April 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
I can’t help but think of Stewart Home’s riotous 90s novels with wild tales of skinhead antics around London penned in parody of Richard Allen’s seminal pulp youthsploitation ‘Skinhead’ series of novels from the 1970s when I see ‘Sta Prest’. In Home’s early novels, there’s a skinhead dropping his Sta-Press trews to receive a blowjob every ten pages, and it’s high comedy and the pages are infused with the sounds of punk rock and ska.
Essex snappy-dressers Sta Prest can genuinely claim to have been there, having started life in the 1970’s. Their return after a LONG time out follows the retrieval off their demos from ‘78 from the vault at Abbey Road Studios.
Back in the day, they only released a brace of singles, with a retrospective compilation emerging in 2010, and it’s only now that they’re finally getting to release their debut album proper, Shadow Boy, with ‘Keep Drinking’ being the first cut released to the world.
They describe it as ‘a modern drinking shanty’ and it’s a rough and ready, choppy, jaunty slice of punk that sounds like the school of 78, only with references to conference calls at lunchtime;’ and various other contemporary markers. Ultimately, as much as it’s a shanty or a punk rock tune, it’s an anti-capitalist, anti-organisational song that’s delivered with a fist-pumping energy. And the sentiment – the desire to ditch it all and fuck off down the pub – is timeless. It’s energetic, it’s fun, it’s relatable, and I’ve got time for one more.
AA
Aural Aggravation 