EP Review: Sharkmuffin – Gamma Gardening

Sharkmuffin – a trio of feisty gals hailing from Brooklyn – tell us that the new Gamma Gardening EP is ‘unlike anything you’ve heard before’. I’m not going to contest that assertion, as on this outing, Sharkmuffin are deliberately and deliciously bewildering, blending their trademark super-kitsch surf pop with angry grunge. In a garage. With ingredients like that, how could you not be intrigued by a concept album about … well, they describe it as a story: “… based around Serpentina, a space dominatrix with a day job as receptionist for a gene editing lab and her new ‘designer baby'”? So to underscore the theme, amongst the heavily-reverbed riffing and unsettling and slightly off-kilter vocal, there is plenty of space bleepery and astral noise. Mostly though it’s a bewildering melange of twanging, howling guitars and grinding, buzzing bass, overlaid with strident singing and shouting cemented onto thunderous drums.

Gamma Gardening is definitely not easy like a Sunday morning. It’s a weird trip, mixing straight ahead tunefulness (Receptionist and Fate) with abrasive, more freeform exploration (Too Many Knobs). You have to take the band at their word about the underlying concept, as it is virtually impossible to disentangle the narrative from the sonic assault. But does it need to make sense? Probably not. It’s cohesive in its own tumultuous and offbeat way, multi-layered and baffling and just gratuitously odd. A refreshingly idiosyncratic release that hints at levels of ‘we don’t give a fuck-ness’ that’s in serious short supply these days. The Cramps meet Nirvana in Bikini Kills’ garden, if you will, or possibly the mirror in the B-52‘s creepy attic. You might have the unsettling feeling that something untoward but quite thrilling has happened to you after you have experienced this EP. But don’t let that notion put you off.

The Gamma Gardening EP is due out on April 5th via Exploding In Sound Records and the trio will be celebrating the EP’s release the same night at Alphaville, NY. The Gamma Gardening EP can be pre-ordered here