Album Review: Local Drags – Shit’s Lookin’ Up

Illinois’s Local Drags is the product of the meeting of Lanny Durbin of Starter Jackets and Matt Sailor of Mayor Sheriff in 2015, following the release of the debut EP, The Boys Are Still In Town, at the tail end of 2017 they’ve been building towards the release of their debut full length, Shit’s Lookin’ Up. The optimistically titled full length was produced by the ridiculously prolific Luke McNeil of The Copyrights ,Hospital Job and Starter Jackets at his Capitol City Recordings Studio in Springfield, IL. Shit’s Lookin’ Up is now available through the joint forces of Stardumb Records and It’s Alive Records.

Can Probably Wait opens Shit’s Looking Up with bright and breezy slab of power pop that has the album title as it’s closing refrain, following this you find that almost every track on Shit’s Lookin’ Up has a kind of nostalgic hopefulness about it and genuinely makes you feel that everything might just work out. It’s fairly obvious that if you’re a fan of Hospital Jobs, Starter Jackets or The Copyrights then this will be up all your alley as, with the exception of the melancholy track Double Bird, this is a debut full length of joyous warm life affirming power pop anthems.

Listening to Shit’s Lookin’ Up you can’t help but feel that everything isn’t as bad as it seems, even if reality contradicts this every day on pretty much every level. With their debut album Local Drags have released a full length that encapsulates the melodic side of earlier punk rock, especially Stiff Records artists such as Wreckless Eric and Elvis Costello, and combines it with a healthy dose of power pop. Shit’s Lookin’ Up is not an album that will change your world but it is one that will make it a happier place, and that’s something given just how grim things look right now.

Shit’s Lookin’ Up is now available via It’s Alive Records and Stardumb Records