Shrag announce final show, give away farewell free download

As we told you last month, London/Brighton scuzz-poppers Shrag are breaking up. Before then, however, they’ve revealed one last show and a goodbye song.

The Fortuna POP! fivepiece will play a final gig at at The Lexington on 15 March with special guest support coming from Comet Gain and Chips For The Poor.

To prepare yourself for that last outing, head here right now to grab a free download of their farewell track ‘On the Spines of Old Cathedrals’.

You can read a parting statement from the band below:

“Kind-hearted and recklessly indulgent indie promoters up and down the country will be relieved to learn that Shrag have decided to call it a day. We’re old, we’ve done this band for nearly TEN YEARS, and we finally made a record that we are uniformly proud of, so enough’s enough!

Press releases weren’t our strong point in the beginning when we started in Brighton in the spring of 2003. We attempted to show what could be done in the music industry without any press, booking agent, or manager (and we showed that you could achieve almost nothing without them). In any case, we just wanted to say thank you to the many, many people who have helped the band to do the things we have done, most if not all of which would have seemed laughably impossible to us when we started out.

We had very lo-fi beginnings and ambitions and our first album sounded like it was made by teenagers (although we really weren’t). Around 2008 something weird happened and we were collectively afflicted by delusions of grandeur and we went on a quest for a perfect pop album. We don’t know if we got there, but it’s been a whole lot of fun trying. Favourite review of all time was the one where the writer said our mere existence made them ‘ashamed to be British’. We’ve disgraced ourselves in front of the whole of Leamington Spa and haemorrhaged thousands of pounds going on what were basically extended holidays to the USA whilst kidding ourselves that we were ‘on tour’. But somehow, we managed to produce three albums that some people quite like. We are proud of ourselves and not sorry for ourselves. We are ending because we didn’t think we could get through another two year process of making an album. But we are ending for the same reasons we began, because it feels right, and because we are friends.

Big love to John Jervis of WIAIWYA, Sean Price of Fortuna POP!, and COUNTLESS other bands/promoters/friends who have helped us and enabled us to do this weird band for so long. You definitely know who you are!”