Band Spotlight: Said The Shark
Said the Shark delivers mellow magic that drifts into your ears and seamlessly floats through your mind. The duo, centered in Copenhagen, is comprised of Canadian Maya Saxell and Danish Kim Oxlund. Their debut album, Always Prattling On About Wolves(I Wave), was released in the fall, and proved to be one of my favorite albums of 2006.
Some of the songs drift into ambient territory and others stay closer to melodious indie rock. The songs mosey at a leisurely pace, not unlike lullabies. Saxell offers poignant vocal delivery somewhere between a gasp and faint hum, complementing the quietness of the music. Most tracks consist of vocals, guitar, bass, piano, and various types of percussion that are used to create an ethereal landscape. The key to appreciating this album is to consider the subtle melodic deviations, tempo changes, and ambient noise.
The music retains a dreamy quality, but the lyrics suggest vulnerability resulting from uncertainty, deception, and loss of innocence. It’s almost as though you are listening to adult wisdom about harsh realities while being reverted to a musical childlike state. “When You Grow Up” could be the calmest anthem for mistrusting authority ever (”You’ll slap some tape on soft, loose lips/Tell tall tales, slip traitors tips/Oh won’t it be so thrilling/When you grow up you’ll make a killing”). It gives you the same feeling you experienced when you realized for the first time that the world isn’t always a nurturing place.
The loudest the album ever gets is about 2:35 into “Saintly Friend”, which makes sense because it involves self-actualization (”I don’t want to be your saintly friend anymore”). This is not to say that the rest of the album is not assertive; there are constant moments of quiet contemplation and realization, such as in “All You Want” (”There’s nothing like the breaking of your will for the sky”) and “Runaround” (”We’re all wolves chasing a cat, chasing a mouse”). Said the Shark lyrically imparts experiential knowledge and musically proves that stripped down music can be transcendental.
By the end of the album you may desire to leave all of the world’s negativity behind and transform into a winged polar bear to go on an atmospheric journey through a starry heaven, as the cover art suggests.
Check out their video for “Blame The View” directed by Jamie Tolagson.
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