Shelf Lives discuss debut album ‘Hypernormal’: “It’s like an episode of ‘South Park’ or ‘GTA’, but it’s real life”
Shelf Lives are stepping fully into their own world with Hypernormal, their long-awaited debut album – a record they describe as feeling like a surreal cartoon universe that has quietly stopped being fictional. According to the duo, it’s less satire now and more documentation.
The London electro bass-punk pair recently unveiled details of the album alongside new single 2PhoneS, which follows earlier track like heR. Set to arrive in early 2026, Hypernormal spans 11 tracks and was produced by guitarist Jonny Hillyard under his imdead moniker. The project also features select collaborators, but the core vision remains unmistakably Shelf Lives: abrasive, playful, confrontational and sharply observant.
Vocalist Sabrina Di Giulio explains that the album is populated by multiple characters, each representing exaggerated versions of people and behaviours that now feel disturbingly familiar. What once belonged to cartoons, video games or satire has bled into everyday reality. The humour is still there, but it’s darker, because the jokes no longer feel hypothetical.
The duo frame Hypernormal as a response to a world where extremes have become routine. The album explores disillusionment with power structures and systems, struggles around autonomy and control, and the tension between rebellion and submission. Themes of fragmented identity, dissociation and sensory overload run throughout, reflecting the constant pressure of existing in an always-on digital environment. Hyper-femininity is also examined as both armour and weapon, while self-loathing and contradiction are treated as unavoidable by-products of modern life.
New single 2PhoneS encapsulates many of these ideas. Built around the concept of duality, the track plays with the divide between what’s real and what’s performed, authentic and artificial. It captures the feeling of living multiple lives at once, switching between versions of yourself depending on the space you occupy – online or offline.
Rather than offering solutions or moral clarity, Shelf Lives lean into the chaos. Hypernormal doesn’t aim to tidy up the madness of the present moment; it amplifies it, mirrors it, and throws it back at the listener with sharp wit and distorted basslines. In doing so, the duo position their debut not just as a collection of songs, but as a snapshot of a world where the absurd has become ordinary – and nobody is quite sure when that happened.
