The list of legendary post-punk bands to which London trio Shopping has been compared could fill up the cover of a Strange Fruit Peel Sessions issue. Likewise, the fragmented shout-it-out hooks, pin-prick guitar lines and ramshackle rhythms heard on the band’s debut album, Consumer Complaints (originally self-released in the UK in 2013, but arriving stateside this month) sound like they were captured live off the floor in the BBC's Maida Vale studios sometime in 1981.-=-=-=-

But if Shopping embrace a shopworn aesthetic, they’re also keenly aware that post-punk’s foundational philosophies—anti-capitalist critique, the procedural nature of modern romance, identity politics—are all the more necessary in the age of online oversharing, selfie-sticked narcissism and smartphone-mediated hookups. Accordingly, the Consumer Complaints highlight "In Other Words" mirrors the frenetic pace of 21st-century urbanity: Andrew Milk’s battered backbeat huffs and puffs like it's trying to catch a bus, the vocal melodies overlap and recede like half-overheard conversations in a crowd, while one of Rachel Aggs’ few unobscured lyrics—"I walked in/ He walked out"—could serve as a pat summation of last night's instantly aborted Tinder encounter.