Gold Sounds at CMJ: Part 3

Wednesday night, Hello Sir Records Showcase @ Bowery Poetry Club: The illustrious Hello Sir Records organized quite the show Wednesday night, featuring some Hello Sir mainstays and some up-and-coming artists. The best performances are once again preceded by an asterisk.

Child Bite: Probably the only mediocre band of the night, Child Bite has all the elements of what could be an interesting band: sloppy and dirty instrumentally and unpolished vocally. Dirtiness is a quality that works in some music (see: We Versus the Shark), but for Child Bite it did little to enhance their sound. Here's hoping they manage to cultivate a sound that works for them in the future.

*Pegasuses-XL: Being a very strange band, I had no idea what to expect from Pegasuses-XL. However, they put on a strong live performance full of unreserved enthusiasm. The set consisted of dual drumming at one point, beatboxing and rapping at another, and instrumental mayhem everywhere else. Most of the members swapped instruments a few times during the show, further displaying their obvious musical propensity. Recent full length The Antiphon highlight "The Big Haunt" made a strong showing, and the band also played some new songs from an upcoming new release.



We Versus the Shark: Gold Sounds favorite We Versus the Shark performed next, and played a few songs from Dirty Versions as well as their recent Radiohead cover and "I Am a Fantastic Battle" from the EP of Bees EP. The band's performance wasn't bad by any stretch, but after seeing them perform several times before, something seemed to be missing. Temporary guitarist Neil Callaghan possesses the chops of recently resigned guitarist Samantha Paulsen, but the chemistry the band had live in the past wasn't as strong this time around. Not that that's Neil's fault; that sort of chemistry is hard to come by, and is only established after a long time of playing as a unit. Hopefully WVTS will grow out of these growing pains and continue their streak of solid releases.



*The Bronzed Chorus: Two-man post-rock that sounds just as full as other like-minded bands with more members. Drummer Brennan O'Brien simultaneously drummed and played keyboard at times and guitarist Adam Joyce made his guitar swell and envelope the room. They created a warm atmosphere the crowd basked in and ingrained themselves into the minds of many an audience member, as seen by the influx of people at their merch table right after they played. The Bronzed Chorus is clearly a band to watch out for in the future.



*So Many Dynamos: For the second night in a row, So Many Dynamos put on the best performance of the night. Again playing a mix of songs old and new, the band played just as tight as the previous night and got the significantly larger crowd dancing. New songs such as "New Bones" and "The Novelty of Haunting" present a new, almost creepy dimension of the band, both with its eerie instrumentals and dark lyrics ("I think your demons need some exercise", "I'll cut the wires that run through your cranium," etc.) that is sure to get them out of the shadow cast upon them by The Dismemberment Plan. Their new album, the Chris Walla-produced The Loud Wars, comes out in February and will definitely be an album to watch out for next year. Even sooner than that, the band will be playing Valentine's in Albany on December 4th with Ra Ra Riot, a show that should not be missed.



I left the show before Ho-Ag went on because it was late. Lame, I know. More to come soon!

Songs to Hear: We Versus the Shark cover Radiohead

We Versus the Shark

VERSUS

Radiohead

If you've followed my posts on this blog, you probably know how much I like We Versus the Shark. One reason I like them is due to their current prolific nature; not only have they released the excellent full length Dirty Versions this year, but they've also been releasing a new cover song every month, which will eventually make up a full album called Murmurmur, for free on mp3-based donation label Quote Unquote Records. So far they've provided unique takes of songs by well-known artists past and present, such as Tom Waits, Deerhoof and Television, and this month they cover the grandaddy of them all, the one band that's almost forbidden to be covered: Radiohead. Not just settling with any old Radiohead song, We Versus the Shark takes on Kid A centerpiece "Idioteque".

Amazingly (or not so amazingly, considering how skilled We Versus the Shark are as musicians), the band's cover is immensely enjoyable, displaying few, if any, of the qualities that made Radiohead's song so great while still creating a song just as good, if not better than, the original version. This is the way covers should be, a total reworking of a song as opposed to a song that adheres strictly to the original band's template. We Versus the Shark changes Idioteque from a somber dance song to an even more depressing-sounding rock opus, with a slow-stomping chorus, verses that just get louder and louder, and a haunting outro. It's unquestionably one of the best covers I've heard, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not checking it out.

Listen to We Versus the Shark's cover of "Idioteque", as well as all their other covers, for free here.

Gold Sounds: We Versus the Shark "Dirty Versions" album review

I was in the middle of writing a pretty long (and long overdue) review of We Versus the Shark's newest album, but then my computer messed up and I lost it all. Here's the abbreviated version:



We live in a time of cultural stagnation, with music being no exception, what with the majority of up-and-coming bands aping rock bands of yore (and very few of them worth your time, in this reviewer's humble opinion). In this climate, it's good to know that some musicians are more concerned with creating new, unique, and interesting music, We Versus the Shark among them. Have you ever heard anything as intense as opener "Hello Blood?" The blistering track starts immediately at full force and doesn't let up for its 2:46 duration. Exhilarating? Check. Inventive? Check (Oh, the time changes. Oh, the dual guitar lines). Listenable? Check, and that's the most important check of all; We Versus manage to avoid completely alienating the listener while treating them to something totally original. The album's not without its faults (lyrics/vocals occasionally seem like an afterthought, last track "Practical Animals" falls victim to some questionable mixing decisions, and a certain track-to-track cohesion is somewhat lacking) but it's loud, it's frantic, it's inventive, and yeah, it's dirty. What could be better?

Rating: 9/11. Key Tracks: "Hello Blood," "Dogs," "Gothic Y'all," "Keep it Wolf." Also, numerical ratings are kind of silly, don't you think?

Listen to We Versus the Shark live here. It's a high quality bootleg that's worth your time. All but the first and last song are featured on Dirty Versions, and they sound just as good live as they do on compact disc. Of course, the two non-Dirty Versions tracks are also worth a listen.

The more traditional route: Myspace

Gold Sounds presents Music to Get Excited About: We Versus the Shark

Hello, listeners of WRPI's fine indie programming! What follows is the first of hopefully more posts about new, exciting and original current music. The first volume of this series explains the appeal of one of contemporary music's most thrilling bands, We Versus the Shark.



So as a college student, I spend a lot of time on my computer listening to music. A copious amount of new music gets released every single week, so much in fact that it can become overwhelming to keep up with it all. Often times it becomes pretty easy to just play some old favorites (in my case, usually Pavement or Archers of Loaf) instead of sifting through the large amount of strikingly similar bands. Popular music among the indie crowd today includes a countless number of overhyped slow folk/70s revival dream pop artists such as Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and Grand Archives (who started out promising but ended up kinda bland) and dance rock bands such as 90% of all up-and-coming artists in England (seriously, it's kind of ridiculous) trying to be the next Hot Chip or LCD Soundsystem. This can become frustrating to the average music listener, trying to differentiate seemingly hundreds of bands from the same genre. Why bother with music when it lacks originality, right?

Please do not fret, fellow music aficionados! I am here to tell you that not all hope is lost. There are still some bands creating unique styles of music, playing unique stuff that you've most likely never heard before. One band that exemplifies these qualities is Athens, GA four piece We Versus the Shark, and 2008 is shaping up to be their breakthrough year.

I first heard of this band through their 2005 debut album "Ruin Everything!," which is incredibly consistent throughout and is one of my personal favorite albums. It's hard to describe the music played on the album, but I'll do my best: chaotic yet controlled and tight. The musical chops of all four members are obvious throughout the release, from the technical and aggressive guitar work of Luke Fields and Samantha Paulsen to the tight rhythm section of bassist Jeff Tobias and drummer Scott Smith. Each song on the album goes through, at the least, several hooks which tend to vary in time signature. It's music to dance to (anyone who has seen me listen to it could attest to this) but mainly it's music to drop your jaw to. The precision and beauty in the madness is a wonder to behold, and the fact that all ten songs on the album are so engrossing makes it all the better. The band ended a two year silence in recorded material last year with the release of the EP of Bees EP (which listeners of my show may have heard from time to time), featuring four more songs in a similar vein to and just as excellent as the ten tracks that make up Ruin Everything!

Furthermore, the band kills it live. I had the pleasure of seeing We Versus the Shark in Boston and Albany last year, and was blown away both times. Both times, they failed to play any songs from Ruin Everything! and I was still left unable to competently describe the experience. From seeing them live, one can easily tell that this band just loves playing music and are thrilled to do so for an audience. All four members play off each other, which makes the band seem like a fluid, well-oiled machine. Basically, everything just seems so natural. Perhaps this is why Ruin Everything! and their soon-to-be-released full length, Dirty Versions, were both recorded live; a band this comfortable, this fluid and this good should just record an album by doing what they do best, that being playing music together as a unit and not separately.

Since I just mentioned their new album, let's talk about that now. I've been looking forward to We Versus the Shark's next full length since hearing Ruin Everything! a couple years ago, and the moment has finally arrived! Dirty Versions, the official follow up, will be released this April, and two new songs ("Hello Blood" and "I Am a Caffienated Corpse") are currently streaming on their myspace. There are several reasons for my excitement about the new album, one being that the music has a very sludgey, dirty (hence the name) feel that differs greatly from Ruin Everything! and another being that yes, these new songs sound so different from Ruin Everything! and are still amazing. One thing that always impresses me in a band is their ability to change their formula from album to album and still end up sounding great (which is why I love bands like Pavement and Modest Mouse). Clearly, We Versus the Shark possesses this quality, yet another reason why this is one exciting band to watch.

One new album not enough for you? We Versus the Shark has seen fit to release another album's worth of material throughout the course of 2008. The album, titled Murmurmur, will eventually consist of 12 songs, with one song released at the beginning of each month of the year. Bands covered so far have been very diverse, from January's choice of "Right Away" by Pattern Is Movement, February's choice of "Greatest Gift" by 80s noise rock band Scratch Acid, and March's choice of "Dirt in the Ground" by the one and only Tom Waits. Clearly, the band's influences run a pretty expansive gamut, which is indicative of their already established musical diversity. It will be exciting to see what else the band will come up with in the future, which is more than I can say for a good amount of bands playing music today. The songs from Murmurmur are free to download from donation-based Quote Unquote Records.

Next, here is a video of the song "Party Animal" (track 11 of the upcoming Dirty Versions) at CMJ 2007. This video showcases the previously mentioned qualities of their live show, as seen from the impromptu dancing at the 2:50 mark and the guitar/drums interplay starting at the 5:40 mark:



Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention other bands related to We Versus the Shark and their label, Hello Sir Records. So Many Dynamos, coming off of 2006's excellent album Flashlights (released by Hello Sir on vinyl), have finished recording their next full length, which should be released later this year. Judging by live performances of the new stuff, it will be just as good as, if not better than, Flashlights (anyone seeing the band at RPI's Ground Zero last fall can attest to this). I could write another story about these guys (maybe I will someday!). Another band to watch out for is Cinemechanica, fellow city and labelmates to We Versus the Shark. The follow-up to their guitar-heavy debut The Martial Arts should be out either later this year (the band states on their website that they were writing in January) or next year.

In conclusion, yes, music is still exciting.

Listen: We Versus the Shark "Slide" from Ruin Everything! mp3