Ecce Shnak - Joke Oso
According to their Facebook page, Ecce Shnak is a “7-piece art-rock band. We're based in NYC. We're one part pop music, another part classical music, and a third part punk music. Our songs are about love, sex, death, change, bravery, and food.”
Ecce Shnak
The band recently dropped Joke Oso, a new EP that follows their 2013 release, called Letters to German Vasquez Rubio.
In Billboard’s premiere of the EP’s single, “Larry, Sleepover Friend,” Saby Reyes-Kulkarni referred to the band as a “chamber punk ensemble,” which is a grand description of the band’s sound, if they actually have a sound that you can point to and define. What Ecce Shnak does, and does well, is pay tribute to certain bands and genres of music. In so doing, the songs come off as parodies, which they very well might be. Or they’re attempts to eulogize, even personify, particular styles of music. Personally, I think they’re satires.
If the band has their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, which may or may not be true, then more power to them.
For example, the EP’s first track, “Larry, Sleepover Friend,” is a takeoff of Weezer’s “Buddy Holly,” which is Weezer’s impression of Buddy Holly’s brand of music. The song opens on shimmering guitars and a straight-forward groove, accompanied by smooth, melodic vocals.
I liken Ecce Shnak to the musical version of Monty Python, performing tuneful skits of music that currently pervades society.
“Xtina: a Foolish Little Prayer for the Broken-Hearted, the Over-Pious, and Queer Kids Worldwide” takes the avant-garde new wave sound of The Talking Heads, infuses it with spectacularly bizarre lyrics and baroque Queen-like flavors, and hits it out of the sonic park.
“You fucked up your relationship cause you believed in God / My friend Jonathan’s a marvelous fellow / Why’d you turn yellow? / You know you two made the handsomest couple. Why’d you turn yellow?”
The last track on the EP, “Dingleberry IV, Finale: Katy’s Wart,” rides the muscular tones of melodic metalcore, and features lyrics as nonsensical as most metal songs.
“A girl should know it in her heart that her fella abides her always. Never chiding, always providing, she should delight in things that are commensurate to her.”
I liken Ecce Shnak to the musical version of Monty Python, performing tuneful skits of music that currently pervades society.
