TRANSWORLD SKATEBOARDING – January 2008
RITKWANDO Reviewed
Sometimes I wish I had been raised in the woods, sort of like those feral Appalachians you hear about rrom time to time who've never met other people and speak in their own made-up language. I just wish I didn't feel the overwhelming need to see everything as a reference, or worse a meta-reference. I wish sometimes that I had no standard for comparison and was just able to listen to an album or watch and Episode of America's Next Top Model and just enjoy it for what it is.
For instance, I would love to tell you guys all about Shipwreck and just have it be about chord progressions and harmonies and time signatures; instead I'm all painted into a corner of cynicism and dubious talent and all I can do is make comparisons. So here you go: Shipwreck sounds like The Doves and The Pixies and Depeche Mode, which are all very good things to sound like. There's a bit of straightforward rock-and-roll giddiness that these dudes occasionally let slip through their cool facade. Maybe there are are few more 80s touchstones than I'm generally comfortable with, but I'll just shut up and go with it.
–Andras Trolf
Lost At Sea (www.lostatsea.net) – 12/05/2007
RITKWANDO Review
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Hailing from what I am assured is the flattest county in Illinois, Shipwreck is an odd moniker for a talented four-piece from the land of the Illini, considering the dismal lack of seaports in landlocked Champaign (though the Great Lake of Michigan is not far away). The band's name may not be entirely apt for a Midwest indie rock act who claims to have never actually been on the high seas, but on Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On, Shipwreck's talent is more than apparent, and their album is far from a wreck of any kind.
The title of Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On is an obvious play on, and perhaps homage to, Shorty Long's "Devil With a Blue Dress On," which was made famous in 1966 by Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels. Shipwreck's third release and second full-length - following their 2005 debut, Origin, and 2006 EP, House of Cards - is a high-octane affair, with mostly up-tempo songs that will enliven even the most cynical club-going but couch-sitting wallflower hipsters to get up, rock out, and shake their money-makers.
Harman Jordan's vocals - baritone, resonant and confident - are comparable to those of Alex Kapranos, the charismatic frontman of Franz Ferdinand. That similary may contribute to the fact that Shipwreck as a whole, in fact, is oddly reminiscent of Franz Ferdinand, in their frenetic energy, with hints of U2, Pink Floyd, and The Killers also showing their influences. Jordan and John Owen share both songwriting and guitar duties for the outfit, and the pair's strings are often similar to The Edge's signature sound, chiming and echoing away, best epitomized on Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On by "Kiss in the Dark" and "Hi-Fi."
Vladimir Brilliant on bass and Chris Waage on drums excel in Shipwreck's rhythm section, brilliant and exceptionally, well, brilliant, especially on the heart-pounding "Walk in the Woods" and pure rocker "House of Cards." The album's lyrics are, by and large, intelligent, though not necessarily genius, as there are no real artistic leaps here, the band content with sticking to its four-piece sound throughout most of the album, leaning on the tried-and-true dichotomy of loud/soft verse/chorus to create tension in their songs. The exception is the sinister "Black Moon," the album's most compelling track, which incorporates spine-tingling cellos, piano, and a Floyd-esque haze of sound and mystery.
Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On is a well-produced, finely crafted, and, really, fun as hell album. It succeeds mostly as a motivator for hellion hip-shaking, embodied by such tracks as "House of Cards," and its inherent energy will surely succeed in live venues, though its softer moments of introspection, as on "Atlantic" and "Black Moon," add balance and depth to an effort that is far from a true shipwreck.
–Eric J. Morgan
SPIN.com – 11/15/2007
Out of the 'Woods', Shipwreck Set Sail
Bust out the bubbly because it's a celebration with Champaign, Illinois' finest. The Midwesterners in Shipwreck might actually be landlocked but that you wouldn't know it from the fluidity of "Walk in the Woods," a stirring number from the group's upcoming mouth-full-length, Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On . With a bass line that would make Peter Hook blush and nippy high-hats accenting a flawless, sputtering beat, it would be more of a moonwalk in these woods -- the song's groove lending itself beautifully to any dance move you can muster.
Riffing rapid-fire like Minus the Bear with some of the step-work sensibilities of the Faint's liveliest numbers, Shipwreck also hint at a shadowy sensuality as sing-speak vocals tell the tale of the song's heroine Sierra, stressing "hands as soft as silk" along with her "button nose and bedroom eyes." A self-described stormy lullaby, the fantastical lyrics could be straight out of Greek mythology, including sparrows in yellow skies, spiders in the leaves and a goddess appearing through the water's ripples. Taut and quick, ultimately it's the song's wailing siren sounds that hint at something sinister lurking beneath this fable. Shipwreck's forthcoming album, Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On , drops Dec. 4 on the Polyvinyl imprint None.
–Joseph Coscarelli
Delusions of Adequacy – 11/01/2007
'Rabbit In The Kitchen With A New Dress On' Album Review
To say that Shipwreck's second full length Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On exceeds expectations might very well be an understatement. The album sways, bumps, and jitters in all the right places. This midwestern band has been kicking around for a while and here they make the kind of record that could catapult them to indie darlings.
Opening with the bump and grind bassline of "Walk in the Woods", Shipwreck announce themselves as different from your typical indie band in that they want to make you shake your ass as well as massage your noodle. The title track bursts through and all of a sudden you realize what you've got a barnburner. "Hi-Fi" even incorporates some handclaps, which only add to the ass shaking vibe and it continues on the skittering "Devils". "All of my life I have learned/The wicked ways of the world" seems to sum up the sentiment in this track pretty well. "Kiss in the Dark" slows up the party vibe with its angular lovesick theme - almost a power ballad, but nonetheless effective.
"House of Cards" opens with a thudding drum beat and some power chords. It's quite powerful in its own way, but not at AC/DC level or anything of the like. Lines like "When you've no one to run to/No one can hurt you" seems a little dour but it fits the track like a glove. "Melusine" slips and slides through your ears, but takes a lighter path than the opening of the album. "You could have just one heart at a time" is the pleading refrain and it soothes and stings all at once. "Black Moon" begins like a poor Radiohead knockoff, but quickly the melody kicks in and you remember what kind of band we are dealing with. "Backbone" incorporates a nice synth line, though the quiet/loud dynamic has been done before. Regardless, the track is effective. The quiet storm of "Atlantic" finishes the album with a slithering synth and a meandering bass. As the track builds, recedes, builds and recedes again, you are left satisfied and content.
Shipwreck isn't fooling around. Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On is a great album and should easily find its way into my year end top ten. The playing is flawless, the production is clean, and the songs are tight. It's tough to see such a talented band not have more recognition. This band should be going places and you better catch them on the way up.
–Diggsy
SKYSCRAPER MAGZINE – WINTER 05/06
Origin (review)
If Bonnie 'Prince' Billy recorded a twenty-first century ode to Pink Floyd?s early masterpiece Ummagumma, it might sound something like Shipwreck's debut offering. The Champaign-Urbana quartet has tapped into singer Harman Jordan's countrified roots in The Buzzards that welded that style to a classic psych-rock structure heavy on the effects. It's hardly a marriage of convenience, which makes the results all the more of interest. Jordan's fingerpicked electric guitar is still at the forefront of most of these songs, which are bathed in a sonic swamp of psychedelia compliments of co-singer-songwriter John Owen's work on guitar and piano. The songs themselves inhale deep, diaphragm breaths, and reflect a prism of influences that range from the delicate fuckery of seventies dub and the outsider post-punk of Pere Ubu to the recent, accessible exploits of The Flaming Lips and the post-hardcore movement led by groups like Jawbox and Tar. As with most debuts, there's room for improvement here. Some of Origin's sounds sadly stuck in the early to mid-nineties, but I chalk that up more to production miscues than a lack of forward thinking. What separates Origin from many other first tries is a guttural instinct to dare to be different. Shipwreck has succeeded at rising above the stale static of their indie peers, and finally given music fans of Champaign-Urbana a reason to forget about Hum and move on already.
–Doug Hoepker
Amazon.com – November 30, 2006
Their best hand yet...
Like the doorways on the front cover, the songs on House of Cards are doorways in their own sense. The creative yin and yang between the band's two principle storytellers, John Owen and Harman Jordan is contrasted well on this EP which spins back and forth between the former's allegories and the latter's fables.
The CD begins with the drum bounce of "House of Cards", a party anthem that could be taken as the band's vis-à-vis with Champaign's rock standard-bearers The Living Blue. Though the song's on the surface seems like a sultry rendezvous, underneath this lies contempt for this superficial way of life, as evidenced in the chorus, "It all falls apart / This house built of cards / Little white lies." A crackling guitar snarl drives the point home.
The next song, "Atlantic" is a picturesque glimpse at the supernatural that misconstrues phantoms and angels in the same sense that "Subterranean Homesick Alien" mistook aliens for angels. "See them walk along the dewy lawn like moving pictures / As they pass the fixtures flicker." Musically, the song reflects the uplifting (though ultimately misplaced) hopes - between reverse-cymbal breaks, the surf guitar passages are some of the most heartrendingly transcendent that Shipwreck and or any other band have reached. To concede without spoiling these glimpses of beauty, it closes with a welcome piano coda that cleanses the palate.
"Alias", the band's challengingly dark piece is also here, though it lacks some of its previous idiosyncratic charm (references to Judas and Janus, strumming above the top fret, etc.) Owen introduces a tableau of unsavory characters reminiscent of Jean Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen," then warns, "Watch out for no one, and cut straight to the prize." It's satisfyingly confrontational with a sinister, double-dealing bassline at its peak.
Lastly, "Black Moon" comes into view in a chilling depth of clarity. In terms of production, this is Adam Schmitt's (Hum, Absinthe Blind) finest moment on the EP, vocals, bass, drums, and movements of cello isolated to resonate within the song's atmosphere of dismay (a bit unusually "Comfortably Numb" for Shipwreck). Delay and tremolo effects soak through the guitar as Jordan's persecuted voice draws attention to the cryptic phrase "a season with a perfect lie."
House of Cards is a new level of artistic maturity for Shipwreck. While their influences are numerous and you can point to moments that reminisce of many bands - the steady flirtation with pedals and occasional guitar jangle of Radiohead or The Chameleons, Owen's vocal similitude to instances of The The or Jordan's gritty closeness to The Meat Puppets. But the exciting thing about Shipwreck is how they bring these to the table in an altogether new and different way in each song - this House of Cards is their best hand yet.
–J.Michael Pence
THE HUB – 01.27.05
Six Megahits EP (review)
Shipwreck is a self-described sub-aquatic alt. country and astro-punk band. While these words do not describe the music put forth, their EP presents music that really does need all of those adjectives to capture the basic idea of the style.
Listening to the album on loop feels like sitting alone on a beach for a day and watching while the world rotates. This music feels natural. The songs don't rush; they take their time in developing an idea. The dynamics on Six Buttery Megahits sway from ambient to driving. Between these extremes, Shipwreck ramps the intensity up or down right to where they want it.
Shipwreck has made a new fan in me. This music both relaxes and rocks. If you're looking for a band that seems to have successfully defined its own genre, then check out Shipwreck.
–Erik Wotring
THE HUB – 05.12.05
Six Megahits EP (review)
This quartet has idiosyncratic sound that demonstrates their poignant sense of humor and openness to experimentation. The vocal and lyrics of Harman Jordan and John Owen waiver somewhere between the crackling of Pavement?s Stephen Malkmus and the baritone country twanginess of Dean and Gene Ween?s astro-psycho-punk rock. That is to say that it's unconventional, but it works.
–John Kessler
THE BUZZ WEEKLY – 06.30.05
Show Announcement
It's hard to decide if Shipwreck is from under the sea or maybe somewhere out West. Their wet, dark rock is despairing and lonely; the guitars chug or jangle, and the dual vocals are windy. This is a band that paints landscapes, not portraits.
–Kyle Gorman
OPENINGBANDS.COM – JULY 06
BAND OF THE MONTH
For a band that I have been acquainted with in the past year, this new showcase of songs overshadows their previous album big time. The recording displays a nice dreamy tone with a tight rhythm section and experimental tangents that keep each song original and fun to listen with good headphones. The multi-layers of individual instruments and well done mixing fit the tone without overshadowing the intentions of being too polished or overproduced.
Rarely for the past several months have I found a new album that grabs my attention from the first listen and beyond my craving for more repeated listens. A solid example of this is the tune "Island of the City" with its mystic mist of swirling minor keys with fuzz guitar and haunting vocals for the catchy "la la la" portion. The tune contains a really tight funk passage during the solo as well. "Orphan" contains bizarre lyrics with good double lead guitar licks and hypnotizing beats worth listening to. "Double Six" stands out with a mellow acoustic sound with lyrics vaguely associated with being drunk. A song closest to their previous album is "Buckle" with a Beck-like trippy funk with plenty of fuzzy distortions. The tune "Telegram" sounds like a long lost Wire tune from their great 154 era. The closing number "Coma" contains awesome back-up chanting with fuzz guitar and yet some solid piano work near the end of the tune.
Throughout the album is the original sound of atmospheric rock along with elements of surf, trip-hop, alternative pop, and haunting experimentations. The only bickering is my dying need for more songs to hear beyond the ten tunes compiled on the album. Well done for a recording that is enjoyable while relaxing or tripping out.
–Nathan Schwalm
OPENINGBANDS.COM – JULY 06
BAND OF THE MONTH
One should not a review an album on an empty stomach. In fact, one should not make their first album review on an empty stomach. I find myself scrambling for some cream cheese and a piece of bread as I wait for the peaceful trail of piano on "Coma" to give way to the head swaying drums of "Cavern" and the repetition of Shipwreck's album, Origin. It may be the hunger pangs, but I find myself remotely paranoid and disturbed by the endearing vocalist's ode in the first thirty seconds. The words ache of plagued sincerity, describing the passing of a former love, but seem to leak that equal amount of creepiness visible in Johnny Cash's "Delia's Gone" or Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." I'm perturbed, and almost simultaneously entranced.
It is easy for the singer to draw comparisons to a bastard child of Talking Heads' David Byrne and Joy Division's Ian Curtis, but his place in the band proves to be more than just a channeling of the postpunk movement; the lyrics do not bathe themselves so much in darkness as to leave me, well...emo. A sense of humor is more than visible in some portions (The use of "verily"; "cheap-ass blush wine") as well as brilliant usage of imagery (The entirety of the song "Buckle"), but a few songs leave one wondering why the background vocals are louder than the lead singer. All of what I love about the vocals are present in the foreground, and it only seems that the morose oohs and ahhs deter from the solidarity of this.
Origin gives a multitude of fans of different genres the opportunity to enjoy the music of Shipwreck for its place as a sonic melding pot. On "Orphan", a downpaced flurry of electronic beats leads into an almost ambient driving force, where it immediately hits a wall of fluttering guitar and funk. Yes, funk, that delightful little muse enlivens this record at moments when one least expects it. With such a heavy attribution of space rock and the ghost of Parliament Funkadelic, it seems difficult to call this an ambient record. While some songs like "Sawbones" and "Double Six" leave one with a wary feeling of sleepiness, it isn't too hard to find a nearby track that wakes the individual from their sedation. One of my favorite tracks, "Coyote", starts with a gorgeously dark pop melody and a sense of urgency from the chugging guitar clicks. What delights me most about the track is the slight interspersing of slide guitar and faint piano giving life to the dirge-like background vocals. Likewise, on "Souvenir" and "Telegram", two of the latter tracks on the album, the conflict between torpor and vigor seems to make for the largest degree of creativity in the record. Heavy and mildly distorted guitars take the place of their spacy predecessors, the drummer seems damn near ecstatic to be playing in double time, and the music has just turned into a fire-breathing space mutant; swiggity. We are immediately saved from this menace as the last track, "Coma", returns the tone to the band's common ground, a constant heave between a pacified melody and a vicious desire to break loose. Gripping my bagel, I long to see if this victory will ever come to a head, and let the CD revolve yet again. (Favorite Tracks: Buckle, Coyote, Orphan)
–Nik Allen
THE BUZZ WEEKLY – 07.06.05
Origin (review)
On a scale of 1-100, Origin is a 99. Bold words for a full-length debut, but not hyperbole. Origin floats by like a message in a bottle, its lyrics like dialogue in a dream after reading a stack of old mystery comic books; the over-all effect is one of spooky beauty.
Both guitarists sing: Harman Jordan is the tremulous baritone, while John Owen is the throaty bass. They take turns as storytellers, setting moods so opaque that character development and context never matter. 'Cavern' is what 'Isis' would be if it had been written by Edgar Allen Poe instead of Bob Dylan. 'Island of the City' shimmers in its extensive expression of longing, drowned in the siren song of Miranda O'Dell and Michelle Owen. 'Orphan' simmers, then boils into a slideshow about fire and fowl.
Shipwreck has consistently characterized their style as "subaquatica," although the arid atmosphere of 'Spur', 'Cactus' and 'Sleeping the Saddle' on Six Buttery Megahits EP was more consistent with desert psychadelia. Origin is somehow wetter, yet no oasis. Oil-based, it paints in muted tones with a luminous finish. Due for release July 5, Origin seems a serious contender for album of the year.
–Todd Hunter
INNOCENT WORDS MAGAZINE – FEB/MAR 06 issue
Origin (review)
Shipwreck is a band whose identity is irrevocably connected with the stories and the folklore they create. Each of the songs on their album Origin are like engaging puzzles inviting the listener to find the few pieces left to fill in.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the song 'Island of the City,' which depicts French monuments and landscapes that become phantoms, feminine sirens that rack both the song's central character and the listener with longing. "Come on home / if you can / because I'm not leaving here..." It's this hauntingly simple chorus that builds into an achingly sincere falsetto, reaching into something that's neither lovesick nor homesick but everything in between.
'Orphan' starts out quietly enough with a simple drum machine sequence, but this is soon replaced by a jarring guitar motif that underscores something darker and more sinister. 'Sawbones' is a nightcap drenched in sanguineous tremolo; it soothes and then stings like a warm shot of brandy.
'Coyote' starts as an animal's narrative of survival, but there's a dismay in the drawl of its chorus slide guitar that points to something grander, heartfelt and tragic in the creature's passing of perilous terrain it understands only in vague notions of "chain link fences" and "blinding lights."
Larger still, there's something chivalrous in its playful surf guitar passages, something innate to its fabric that describes the sense of traversing through heaven and hell for the ideal of love. The closing song, 'Coma,' with its words, "Who was here before?" spoken over gentle piano crescendos and recumbent sighs, reaches a soaring finality, then sets into the distance.
From these and other moments, the measure of Origin becomes clear. Figurative, literary and beautiful, it is a triumph of musical and lyrical affinity.
–Joseph Pence
THE BUZZ WEEKLY – 04.06.06
Best Rock Band and Best Rock Album Nominees
There's something in a shipwreck that's very reminiscent of the fact that there was life there, and there were things going on, and then it's a very still presence. All the physical things are left behind, and there's a mood in and of itself, without any people there. So says John Owen, singer and songwriter of local rock band, Shipwreck. Drawing on musical influences as diverse as 1960s and 1970s soul and funk, and bands like Radiohead, Spoon and Neutral Milk Hotel, the band pays attention to timbre and tone quality, using finger-plucking guitar lines, unusual song structures and atmospheric instrumental sections. With band members hailing from central Illinois (except their bassist, who was born in Russia, and later moved to Springfield), the Champaign-based quartet has one full-length album under its belt (2005's Origin, nominated under the Best Album category for the Local Music Awards) and they plan to record extensively in the next year, with the ambitious goal of releasing four EPs in the next sixteen months.
–Susan Schomburg
THE BUZZ WEEKLY – 04.21.06
Show Announcement
Topping off the night is Shipwreck. and what can we say about Shipwreck that we haven't said already? Simply that they sound like a padded room in which indie rock and country drawl bounce from wall to wall in dusty desert heat. And they get better every time.
–Zack Adcock