The Washington, DC art-punk band Shudder To Think started in 1986 and released a series of confoundingly foxy records before breaking up in 1996. Frontman Craig Wedren went on to a prolific career scoring films and TV shows, and Shudder To Think returned for reunion tours in 2008 and 2025. Last year, they released a two-song single that constituted their first new music in 27 years. Next month, they'll follow that with a new three-song EP called Who Sent You?
Like last year's "Thirst Walk" b/w "Playback" 7", Shudder To Think's upcoming Who Sent You? EP is coming out on Dischord Records, the historic DC indie that put out the band's early records before they jumped to Epic for 1994's Pony Express Record. (Unless I'm forgetting someone, the only Dischord bands that signed to majors in the post-Nirvana wave were Shudder To Think and Jawbox, and it didn't really work out for either of them.) The new EP's title track is a sidelong skronk that really does resurrect the band's classic sound. Here's what Craig Wedren says about it:
"Who Sent You?" is about my teenage years in Cleveland in the 1980s, just before I moved to DC with my outsized emotions – young, horny, bored. It’s both a collage of memories, refracted through the prism of time, and a message back to my younger self (“sense your way home”). Above all, it’s a nocturnal THANK YOU to all of the girls, family, friends, music, and invisible hands that lit the path, angels and devils both. Who, indeed, sent you??
Check it out below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Who Sent You?"
02 "Something To Do"
03 "Release The Ball"
TOUR DATES:
9/11 - Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church *
9/12 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom *
9/20 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Masonic Lodge At Hollywood Forever Cemetery
* with Miss Grit
The Who Sent You? EP is out 9/11 on Discord.
