AEM018 Shark?

The biggest ques­tion asked by the music of Shark? is, well, Shark? No, seri­ously, this is pretty straight­for­ward busi­ness, albeit mas­ter­fully made, with an expan­sive, almost the­o­ret­i­cal under­stand­ing of what “indie rock” could mean in an era when that term has become prac­ti­cally mean­ing­less. So, regard­less of how, I don’t know, not-new-in terms of synth wob­bles, cut-up drums, faux-afro fla­vor, fu*k it, even com­pres­sion–Shark? sound, that reac­tionary aes­thetic, here appro­pri­ated with live instru­ments the way other bands mine Max MSP, is very inter­est­ing indeed.

Why? Because Shark? (from Brook­lyn) proves that there is such a thing as an “indie” sound that has noth­ing to do with actual “indie-pendence”, that the acci­den­tal aes­thetic of base­ment pro­duc­tions of the 80s and 90s has become dis­lo­cated from the con­di­tions of their pro­duc­tion. What we have here is pure sim­u­lacrum, the sign (rock) dis­so­ci­ated from its sig­ni­fied (filth, 4-Tracks, etc.) to make way for an “indie rock” that is noth­ing but sound sig­ni­fy­ing itself.

Snore. But really, it’s worth not­ing how this pat­tern has been unfold­ing across the pop-music con­scious­ness of Amer­ica since, let’s say, The Strokes (and by the Strokes, I don’t specif­i­cally mean the Strokes, but that whole idea of the Strokes). Not that “indie” is a new term. I remem­ber that shit on my amazon.com wish­list when I was 8 and not know­ing what it meant. Still, “indie”, at some point, must have meant “inde­pen­dent”, as in, not “independent-y sound­ing music”, but inde­pen­dence from major labels, play­ing nasty, hepatitis-C-infected liv­ing rooms, break­ing strings and sell­ing your shoes for new ones, the van blow­ing a tire in Topeka, and a bunch of other stuff I could make up. “Indie” wasn’t a way to play, it was an eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion that neces­si­tated a way of play­ing. Do I sound like an old dude? I’m not com­plain­ing. It’s just I have to believe that “indie” was a real thing before it was a genre, just like there was an “indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion” before there was indus­trial music.

But back to Shark?. I love this band. Their record sounds great! They have incred­i­ble songs, great craft, a thick sound that I’d be psy­ched to see live. It sounds like some undis­cov­ered 1976 gem of a sin­gle dug up in the way back of the last sur­viv­ing CD store in Minneapolis’s going-out-of busi­ness sale. Kind of. Or it could be from Swe­den. That’s the whole point. Wher­ever these guys are from, the music is place-less, scene-less, history-less while at the same time evok­ing per­fectly some­place, some scene, some fraught and cool history.

“I’m an Ani­mal,” has my new favorite come­back. In response to the title, the singer, on the sec­ond verse, rebuts, in a dead-eyed, crackly voice, “You’re a min­eral.” Bril­liant! Let’s talk about this. The song kicks off with some sham­bolic hi-hats, then a big organ swell, then some stac­cato gui­tars, meaty-bass, echo-y, tinny vocals. It’s pitch-perfect in its imper­fec­tions, like a cheese-filled with deli­cious fun­gus and cov­ered in holes. Yada-yada, the tune con­tin­ues. Then, out of left-field comes this war­bly, crazy-flute synth, some­where between “My Heart Will Go On” and MGMT (wait, is there “some­where between” those two things?). It’s a killer riff. But what is it? The singer knows. If verse one was the ani­mal, verse two is the mineral.

The sec­ond track “Colder Ara­bella”, a slightly-renamed cover, appar­ently, of another Brook­lyn band called Dinosaur Feathers’s tune called “Cold Ara­bella,” dri­ves the dis­con­nect home. While the titling is amus­ing, it’s also a seem­ingly out-of-place nod to remix cul­ture: Dinosaur Feathers’s is cold, but this shit is colder! I’d believe it. The track, dry, fuzzed-out, dead­pan, a lit­tle out of tune, is so anony­mous it could have been pro­duced autonomously from a sen­tient ver­sion of the 1984 SST cat­a­log. It’s chilly, not like steel gird­ers in Feb­ru­ary, but like cir­cuits in cold storage.

What we have in Shark? is a ques­tion with­out an answer, where the unan­swer­abil­ity of the ques­tion (where, when, who) makes the band unique and spe­cific. Shark? could only exist now, when­ever now hap­pens to be.

Ben Las­man

Side A — I’m an Animal Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Colder Arabella Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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