Stream: Shark Toys, ‘Something Something Else’

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sharktoys
Shark Toys

John Talley-Jones of seminal punk band The Urinals describes Shark Toys as “exuberant, unruly, fun and profound in a smack-across-the-head kind of way.” On the new Shark Toys album, “Outsider Sect,” released April 4 on Mt.St.Mtn., Daniel and Rina Clodfelter, Michael Naeimollah, and Emanuel Farias strut their weirdo punk stuff, citing the impact on their music from Subway Sect, Pere Ubu, TVP, Urinals, Mission of Burma, Intelligence, Tyvek, Black Randy, the Fall, CCR and Velvet Underground. This batch of tunes came from a session with Dave Fox of the Traditional Fools, who has recorded Fuzz, Scraper, Vial, Wand, and Meatbodies, to name a few.

The song “Something Something Else” was written shortly after the band recorded their first LP with Monty Buckles from Lamps three years ago. Daniel Clodfelter says that rhythmically, the tune was influenced by Lamps and bands like Feedtime, “with distorted bass and driving drums carrying the lead,” keeping the guitar part simple to let Naeimollah’s bass and Rina Clodfelter’s keyboard shine through. Lyrically, he says, “I tried to match the dark and driving tones with an equally dark and lost sense of existential disquiet. The chorus, though it can also be taken literally, accentuating the bleakness of the song, can also be taken as an anti-chorus of some sort where instead of saying anything there is an invitation for the listen to interpret what should have been said instead of “something / something else / nothing / something.” Look up all those mentioned bands. Make your record collection happy.

||| Stream: “Something Something Else”

||| Live: Shark Toys perform at the Bootleg Theater on April 21.