“Violent Shiver,” Benjamin Booker’s infectious and inescapable hit single, is the ideal summation of what raw musicianship sounds like. Booker’s creative impulses splinter between ear-corroding croons, crashing drums, and stealthy riffs. Yet he insists that he played no part in selecting it as the song that would debut his talents to the world. “I literally wrote it in five minutes—it was the first thing I played on guitar. We recorded it, and I thought it was just another song—I didn’t pick it as the first single.” More
