Shark Rock

Shark Rock!

Perhaps the most light-hearted of this impressive crop of bands, Shark Rock! are a two-piece that deal in an alternately crunchy and twiddly, yet entirely unpredictable, emo-core sound. Featuring the talents of one member of Elizabeth Colour Wheel, this Berklee-based band -- an important distinction, considering most of these groups also feature Berklee students but don’t quite identify as such -- makes music that rarely ends where it began. There is a lot of quirk, and it is good: among Shark Rock!'s three known recordings is a quasi-cover of "Don't Fear The Reaper" entitled "Sued By The Cult," in which they lift the melody and lyrics from the Blue Oyster Cult classic to illuminate a song ostensibly about actually being sued by the classic rock greats. Maybe? Shark Rock!'s eponymous demo, while mostly an exercise in testing a variety of sounds, is especially re-playable due in large part to the two-piece's keen musicianship, which strikes a bit of a contrast with the demo's admittedly questionable audio fidelity. The pair played a house show tonight, but it probably already happened, so you will have to remain vigilant for your next opportunity to be Shark Rock!ed. Take a look at some consistently great answers from the duo, and stream its demo, below.
CC: Who does what when you guys make the rock and roll?

Mike Costa plays drums. Emmett Palaima plays guitar and sings.

CC: Where/when did the band form?

We met last fall at Berklee. We had talked to each other a little bit beforehand, but mostly we met through the band. I (Emmett) hit up Mike because I had heard he was a drummer that knew what was up, and we started jamming and writing together.

CC: How would describe your sound, that is, if you have a singular one you've settled on?

Haha, maybe Shark Rock? We try to do our own thing more than fit into any genre. The one big thing that we always stick to is that we try and get the fullest possible sound out of only two members. Other than that, the mindset is to just write what we write and to make it as good as we can from there. If we come up with an idea we think would be cool or funny, we usually just go for it, no matter what it is. That's how the "Don't Fear the Reaper" cover in "Sued By The Cult" happened. However, all that said, we do have a heavy tendency towards math rock and noise and are very influenced by bands like Tera Melos, Hella and Lightning Bolt, in terms of rhythm and abruptness. Actually, though, a lot of the harmonic sensibility actually comes from bluegrass being mixed with more modern styles.

CC: Have you played any shows yet? If so, how have they gone?

We've played our first show [March] 15, with The Exploration, Shakusky and Settler. It was in Billy Philhower's awesome basement for a bunch of emo kids. We got a great reception and playing with The Exploration was super cool, so overall we were really happy with how it went, especially for our first show. We also got to borrow this massive Orange cab from Settler, which seemed really appropriate on "Sued By The Cult."

CC: Tell us a bit about your demo, which we love.

Our intent with the demo was mainly to get our music out there so we could start playing shows and letting people know that we're a thing. The way we did everything on it was pretty DIY/lo-fi and not always exactly the correct way of doing things, the drums were recorded by Nick Paredes at Propellerhead Studio in early December, then Emmett added guitars, vocals and additional production over our winter break with the help of our friend Max Deems in Austin, TX, who mixed and mastered it for us. We tried to go for more of a room sound on the guitar so it would fill more space, we had a lot of far mics and at one point were also running it through this little bass amp stuck inside a bathtub. It was kind of difficult to get everything to sound right, but in the end we ended up with what we wanted, a demo that was fun to listen to. We made some tapes that sold really fast, and we're restocking for our next show.

CC: What's next for y'all?

We're recording our first album this summer, entitled Summer's Ending, slated for release in late September to early August, around the time that summer will actually be ending. As opposed to the demo, we're going for more of a high fidelity sound for the album. The goal is to make it something of an epic of the summer, the listening to which will be a really cohesive experience. We're also looking into touring around the same time as the release to support the album, hitting dates around the Northeast, most likely with Macaulay Sulkin. Until then, we're just playing around Boston as much as possible. The next thing we're playing is a house show on April 4 [Sorry this piece didn't publish in time, lads -- Ed.]. We also have a live video in the mixing/editing process we're going to release soon, [which was] recorded by Nate Patsfall and filmed by Sam Colby. - Clicky Clicky Music Blog