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Psych-Rock Rock Singles

Shark Legs’ new track conjures images of mystical half-man creatures

Release date: September 10th, 2018

Dan Ray October 2, 2018
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Shark Legs’ new track conjures images of mystical half-man creatures October 2, 2018

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Shark Legs plays Central Saloon in June. // Photo by Peter Cozens

Shark Legs was one of the first ever bands covered by Dan’s Tunes. At that show, I was instantly captivated by Legs’ fairly standard rock compositions paired with vocalist Ryan Bedard’s musical-theater-style vibrato. The disparate elements create a feel similar to “Rock of Ages.” It’s different, exciting, and, most of all, fun. The group’s latest release, “Mancheetah,” stays in line with this pattern, starting with some solid guitar waves and making its way into a bridge composed mostly of a driving drum beat, grooving guitar solo, and thumping bass line. Throughout the track, the vocals are mixed slightly further back, but, during the bridge, Bedard’s distorted vocals weave their way in and out of the mix, creating a sound not dissimilar to a cartoon alien tuning a radio.

Alas, we get an alien, but no man, no cheetah, and, least fortunate of all, no man-cheetah. “Mancheetah” itself is not an incredibly striking track, but it works well in the vein of what Shark Legs does: rock musicianship infused with a bit of flamboyance. The lack of any mention of the title, though, is disappointing. Is it a man who cheats? Is it some sort of half-man, half-cheetah concoction? Given Shark Legs’ logo of, quite literally, a shark with legs, I was hoping for the latter.

While the lyrics are not super specific, what the track does discuss is an obviously troubled relationship: “is that you breathing on the phone….do you even really listen? Do you hear me?” There are many scenarios in which the title makes complete sense — someone was cheated on, there are suspicions of cheating, or the rabid bridge just invokes an image of a man-cheetah running fast through the urban jungle — but there’s just no getting around the blatant absence of the mystical Mancheetah. Where art thou?

Half-man creatures aside, “Mancheetah” does deliver. The slightly-over-three-minute track has just two full verses and two full choruses (followed by the bridge and a half chorus that finishes out the tune), and every second is compelling. The bass and drum lines fit together seamlessly to propel the listener into the main breakdown — the true highlight of the track — where we are all free to imagine whatever kind of man-cheetah we want.

7.7

Instrumentation

 8.0/10

Lyrics

 7.0/10

Vocals

 8.0/10

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).