Kim Shattuck started the Muffs in the early ’90s as a reaction to the self-serious West Coast alternative music scene blowing up around her. “I was getting really bummed,” she remembered years later. “Stuff like the Red Hot Chili Peppers were happening and I was like, ‘I fucking hate them so much, I have to write the anti-Red Hot Chili Peppers songs.’” So she did, burying shards of Beatles and Kinks melodies in sneering three-chord punk ditties. Once she started, she never stopped.
The Muffs signed to Warner Bros. for their first three records, but despite Shattuck’s sticky melodies and instantly recognizable sing-scream, success on the level of California contemporaries Green Day and the Offspring eluded them. Their biggest mainstream moment remains their disaffected cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America”—it plays during the opening credits of Clueless. (Shattuck hated that, too. “The lyrics are not good. Like, they talk about East California. What is that?” she told TIME in 2015.) Shattuck seemed to know her band wasn’t cut out for the big time, and was unfazed: “[Our label has] this job to break our band,” she told Rolling Stone in 1995. “And I totally feel sorry for them because it’s not going to happen.”
Instead, the Muffs attained a cult status that grew steadily over the years. By the time Shattuck briefly joined the reunited Pixies—and was subsequently kicked out, possibly for being too extroverted—there was hardly a punk songwriter alive who hadn’t been touched by her throat-shredding screams, lively melodies, and bratty, tender songwriting.
So when, two weeks before the release of their seventh album No Holiday, Shattuck’s husband of 16 years shared that Shattuck had died of ALS, the world briefly stopped. Shattuck had never publicly talked about her diagnosis, so her passing came as a devastating shock. An outpouring of grief came from her contemporaries and those she’d inspired. The forthcoming record suddenly took on new meaning: This would be the final time we’d ever get to hear Shattuck’s wail.
The songs on No Holiday were written throughout Shattuck’s career, from 1991 to 2017, so it feels like a best-of record, or a retrospective. “We wanted to create something lasting and special,” drummer Roy McDonald said of No Holiday. If a young person hadn’t heard of the Muffs, it would be a safe bet to hand them this record and say “start here.”
Shattuck’s voice feels raspier and more raw on some of the album’s 18 tracks, a little less energetic, but the musical chemistry between her, McDonald, and bassist Ronnie Barnett remains untouched by time. At the end of “Lucky Charm,” her voice twinges upward with distinctive snideness: “You should be in the mooo-vieesss, yeeeeah.” It’s good to have her back.
On a few songs, it feels as if the full band has been retrofitted onto Shattuck’s acoustic demos. That mix-and-match sound is an interesting but confusing choice: Some of those songs, like “Happier Just Being With You” and “Too Awake,” would have sounded just fine with just Shattuck’s voice and acoustic guitar. The full band makes it harder to hear her, which is—now more than ever—what listeners want most.
The most unexpected moment on No Holiday comes in its final track, “Sky.” In contrast to nearly 30 years of sneering, eye-rolling, screeching, and fighting back, on “Sky” Shattuck offers earnest lullaby over just an acoustic guitar and a church organ. “I am laying on the nice cool grass and now I’m thinking/Wondering if the birds can fly straight up and there’s no ceiling,” she sings, tenderly. “I know I can’t touch the sky/I know I’ll wonder why.”
“Sky” is a tragically perfect way to close out what is now the Muffs’ final record. Shattuck will be remembered for many things: her outsized-but-undersung contribution to the punk lexicon, her lyrics that were mean and sarcastic and sensitive and sweet, all at once. But “Sky” is a poignant reminder that she was an unforgettable songwriter and a buoyant spirit.
Buy: Rough Trade
