I Wanna Go Home

One of the Bay Area’s best-kept secrets, Shannon & The Clams play unapologetically '60s-inspired garage rock. Yet it's not your standard retro garage rock; this is off-the-rails music that filters infectious girl-group harmonies through a proto-punk attack on par with The Trashmen. A delightfully lo-fi production gives I Wanna Go Home the feel of playing scratchy 45 singles. On “Troublemaker,” Shannon Shaw’s raspy, soulful voice resembles Scottish vocalist Lulu crooning on a 1965 episode of Shindig!. “The Warlock in the Woods” follows with an even scratchier, no-fi anti-production. But if you listen closely through the static and hiss, you can hear a band that’s a bona fide powerhouse in a live setting—especially the rhythm section, which pounds out explosive surf-stompers over what sounds like a pawnshop Fender mustang. The garage doo-wop track “Cry Aye Aye Aye” plays with an early-'60s melodrama that John Waters would eat up.