Benjamin Shaw

Debuting alongside Audio Antihero with ‘I Got the Pox, the Pox is What I Got EP‘ in 2009, the Canada-born, Blackpool-raised and Melbourne-residing Benjamin Shaw became the most indispensable person in this little label’s history through a series of albums which were bitterly beautiful and eccentrically emotional. From ‘There’s Always Hope, There’s Always Cabernet‘ to ‘Megadead,’ Shaw found and discarded sounds and styles as both his nihilism and empathy clashed within the limitless contradictions of modern life. His work was often polarising, and saw him as described as “Pop’s outsider,” “an Alternative idol,” “a miserable fucker,” and “a freak” by bemused writers and DJs at Drowned in Sound, DIY Mag, The Line of Best Fit, Gold Flake Paint, CLASH Magazine, The Skinny, and BBC 6 Music. As Shaw grew increasingly uncomfortable with the ill-fitting “singer-songwriter” tag, he stopped performing live for five years, only returning briefly in 2019 to play Austria’s Donaufestival and an intimate show in Australia before he found greater comfort and freedom under the Megadead name in 2020.