Artist: We Versus the Shark
Title: Ruin Everything!
Released: January 2005
Label: Hello Sir Records
Notes: From Pop Matters: You should know this, too: Ruin Everything opens with "You Don't Have to Kick It", it gives dancepunk a send-off by way of post-punk, but it's neither. You'll hear those genres mentioned quite a bit around this band in the next few weeks, but neither one quite fits. The band shows off too much nastiness and virtuosity to be pinned down like that. Math runk has the energy and aggression of punk, but it's really complicated and has all these jazz and prog influences and the time-signature changes and a lot of other stuff that doesn't really matter if the music rocks hard, and matters even less if it doesn't. More...
From Pitchfork: From the splintering, streamlined funk and hoarse exhortations of "You Don't Have to Kick It", to the syncopated percussion and clustered freak-outs of the chameleonic "Ten Uh Clock Heart Uh Tack", to the side winding, snake charming shimmy of "This Graceless Planet", this record refuses to hold still long enough to draw a bead on it. "I am at the Mercy of an Ambulance Driver" combines the quirky vocal fillips Q and Not U deployed with such success on "Soft Pyramids" with the paradoxically inert yet gliding micro-disco of the best Dismemberment Plan songs. More...
From Splendid: Ruin Everything! is the album Q and Not U were supposed to make before they completely sissied out on us with Power. Part Dismemberment Plan, part Drive Like Jehu, with just a touch of Gang of Four and a good bit of math-rock blood in their veins, We Versus the Shark are something like a million-dollar-man of dancepunk. Sometimes thumping across a funked, pop landscape with a kickdrum, other times clattering across it with math-rock stutters, their greatest fault is that their songs sometimes suffer from a rattling lack of internal cohesion. More...
Tracks (
Click song title to hear it in RealAudio):| 1. | You Don't Have to Kick It | |
| 2. | |
As Good As It Gets |
| 3. | Ten Uh Clock Heart Uh Tack | |
| 4. | |
This Graceless Planet |
| 5. | I Am Destined for Greatness | |
| 6. | |
Slide |
| 7. | I Am at the Mercy of an Ambulance Driver | |
| 8. | Easter Island is for Lovers | |
| 9. | |
No Flint No Spark |
| 10. | I Am Your Idea | |
• We Versus the Shark (official site)
• We Versus the Shark (MySpace site)
• Hello Sir Records