BUY JOE GIDEON AND THE SHARK’S NEW ALBUM ‘FREAKISH’ NOW AT ROUGH TRADE EAST AND COLLECT YOUR WRISTBAND AT THE SAME TIME, ANY REMAINING WRISTBANDS WILL BE GIVEN OUT 1 HOUR PRIOR TO THE STAGE TIME…ONE PER PERSON
Order ‘Freakish’ from Rough Trade.
Freakish was written and recorded during, as the band put it, “most turbulent times” referring to births, and deaths.
Harum Scarum burst the band onto the scene, earning them a treasure trove of pull-quotes from all the right places (“an inspired band with fire at their fingertips”-NME, “a terrific debut”-UNCUT), earning invites to support the likes of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Seasick Steve, with Time Out calling them “one of the best live acts we’ve seen all year.” Glamourous sister Viva’s (The Shark) showy gymnastic drumming was the perfect yin to Gideon’s bookish, charmingly awkward yang. The album showcased their compelling blend of driving alt-rock riff-o-rama, with runaway offbeat monologues and intermittent melodious poignancy.
Nothing has changed. Except they are now more, erm, “FREAKISH”!
What we have here is idiosyncratic individuality on an entertainingly eccentric, possibly borderline lunatic, scale. We have songs inspired by Werner Herzog getting shot in the gut whilst being interviewed by Mark Kermode (The Insignificant Bullet), true stories about being invited three years in a row to Elvis the dog’s birthday at the Queen’s Park bandstand, references to impersonating a priest, a cat called Sylvester, ping-pong, badly negotiating the London Underground doobied up to the eyeballs and ending up at the end of the line (You, The Pole, and The Rastafarian)… You have been warned!
The album’s cream topping comes from Viva’s vocal debut, the synth-stomp hit single Poor Born, where she can be heard howling Dead Moon lyrics through a vocoder (“I’m pissed off, pissed off, pissed off, it’s just the way I am”) . Number 1 with a mullet!