El Shirota

Guitar-heavy quartet El Shirota calls on the influence of '90s alt-rock songwriting and high-volume shoegaze production, resulting in a sound that quickly turns from dreamy textures to noisy chaos. The band took their time developing, releasing only a few raw EPs in the seven years between forming and completing their debut album, 2020's Tiempos Raros. El Shirota were formed in 2013 in a suburb of Mexico City by friends Alonso Salamanca, Jose Ignacio Gómez, Mauricio Avendaño, and David Yaneli. The quartet quickly recorded and self-released their Chiluca No Es Satélite EP, a four-song collection of abrasive, punky demos released the same year the band formed. New music came slowly for El Shirota, and the band's lineup shuffled often. In 2016 they released a self-titled 12" EP with a more refined sound somewhere between post-punk and shoegaze, following with another self-titled EP in the same vein two years later. By the time of their 2020 full-length debut Tiempos Raros, the band's personnel had changed again and their music was leaning more heavily on the influence of '90s alternative rock sounds like Weezer and Sonic Youth. ~ Fred Thomas