SHOP ASSISTANTS : SHOP ASSISTANTS

1. I Don't Want to Be Friends With You
2. All Day Long
3. Before I Wake
4. Caledonian Road
5. All That Ever Mattered
6. Fixed Grin
7. Somewhere in China
8. Train From Kansas City
9. Home Again
10. Seems to Be
11. After Dark
12. All of the Time
13. What a Way to Die
14. Nature Lover

Label : Chrysalis

Release Year : 1986

Review (Wikipedia) : Shop Assistants (aka Will Anything Happen) is the only album released by Shop Assistants. It was released in November 1986 on the Chrysalis Records 'indie' offshoot Blue Guitar. The album was critically acclaimed by Sounds staff that made 'Shop Assistants' in the list of top 50 best albums of 1986. The album was reissued in 1997 by Overground Records, and again on CD by Cherry Red in 2008 with two bonus tracks. Both of these had originally appeared on the B-side of the single "I Don't Want To Be Friends With You". The album was described by Allmusic's Jason Ankeny as "an essential artefact of its times".

Review (AllMusic) : The Shop Assistants represented all that was right and good with Scottish rock during the mid-'80s; their music brilliantly fused the gap between the three-chord noise of the Jesus & Mary Chain and the shambling naïveté of bands like the Pastels, generating infectious, sweet-and-sour pop completely lacking in pretense and polish. Will Anything Happen is a superb retrospective combining the group's self-titled 1986 debut LP with tracks from their earlier EPs, and although a little of the Shop Assistants' primitive charms can go a long way, the spirit and sheer exuberance of their music is never less than infectious. An essential artifact of its times.