The Sharknado 3 Delivers Everything You Hoped For, Probably

Sharknado 3“Go, go, go, go, go go go/Run away from the Sharknado/It’s your greatest foe, foe, foe/Come on, get eaten by the Sharknado.” That’s the first stanza you hear in the Sharknado 3 soundtrack, and it’s about as clear a statement of intent as you could hope for. It’s from a song by Quint called “(The Ballad Of) Sharknado.” Your gut reaction to that sentence probably tells you everything you need to know about whether you’re going to like this or not. Personally, I’m delighted. The soundtrack for Sharknado 3 is, on a conceptual level, one of my favorite things to have ever reviewed. A lot of that is wrapped up in my amazement at Sharknado-as-cultural-phenomenon. It’s an idea that’s just the right amount of brilliance and stupidity to sink its hooks into the cultural consciousness and not let go. The existence of Sharknado as a film delights me. The crowd-sourced title of the second one, Sharknado 2: The Second One, sometimes makes me titter to myself when I’m alone. All of this ridiculousness has (thus far) culminated in the upcoming Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, which amazingly comes complete with a soundtrack album, some 38 minutes of largely original songs that are specifically about sharks, their presence in tornados, and the running-away-from thereof. Again: This is an actual thing, that exists in the real-live world that you and I inhabit. You can buy it with money, and spend time listening to it. But should you? Anyone can marvel at the fact that society’s chosen to make room for such a thing – how is the music? The answer is “surprisingly versatile.” It’s largely filled with the kind of amped-up, punk-meets-surf-rock aesthetic that’s driven a lot of the movies’ musical moments. But it almost reads like a sampler platter of popular music genres. Like I said, a lot of it is three-chord punk with surf rock accents. The opening cut certainly fits into that bill. There’s “Shark Attack” by Barnaby Austin, which sounds like a Runaways song, and a couple of pop-punk tracks, like Dave Days’s “Shark Fight.” There are some surprising moments, though. There’s a synthed-up cover of The Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation” that sounds every bit as 80’s in a completely different way. It actually wouldn’t feel out of place sitting next to a Giorgio Moroder score, or on some chillwave Spotify playlist next to Washed Out. There’s also a Mission of Burma cover, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver,” that actually sort of bristles with a quiet energy, subdued but energetic. Surprisingly (Unsurprisingly?) West Coast garage-rock stalwarts Camper Van Beethoven make a couple of appearances on the album that run the gamut from garage rock punk to more of a reggae/ska feel. Then there’s “Shark Rain,” which kind of sounds like an early-2000s boy band with a slightly dark twist. True to the album’s form, it rhymes “Tuesday” with “Tuesday.” It also about coming to grips with the fact that it’s literally raining sharks outside. It has a surprisingly catchy little bass line. The album also goes REALLY retro more than once, often for the standout tracks by The Dead Kennedy’s East Bay Ray. There’s the played-straight surf rock of “Shark Beach,”  with tender old-school guitar playing triplets over a bass line that’s drowning in Buddy-Holly reverb. There’s also the distorted rockabilly of “Shark Truck.” Martin Luther Lennon turns in “”Armageddon Surfer Girl, Rock On,” which combines malt-shop chords and melodics with a slightly pop-punk vocal timbre and production. It actually kind of reminds me of the Stubbs the Zombie soundtrack, which had a bunch of indie and alternative groups cover 50’s rock songs. There’s also an EDM remix of the Jaws theme. You wouldn’t think they’d want to invite the comparison, but at this point, they’re probably riding too high to care. Quint (a band which apparently includes the film’s director) closes the album with “Crash,” a serviceable little rock number that, curiously, doesn’t have muchto do with sharks. Maybe it rolls over the credits when the sharks are gone. A track-by-track breakdown of an album is one of the big no-no’s of music writing, but to its credit, the Sharknado 3 soundtrack is all over the place in a way that almost demands it. Yet most of the songs make sense on the album from a musical standpoint, despite their varied genres. And you certainly can’t fault the thematic cohesion. (I wouldn’t recommend taking a drink every time you hear the word “shark.”) As I alluded earlier, you probably already know if you’re in the target audience for the Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! soundtrack. There are, to put it simply, a lot of songs about sharks. Some of them are as good as you would expect them to be. Several of them are surprisingly well-done. Almost all of them are entertaining. I would absolutely drive down the road blasting this album with the windows down to look at peoples’ faces. If that’s part of your criteria for picking up an album, you should maybe check it out. Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! airs on SyFy July 22nd. It stars Tara Reid, Ian Ziering, Cassie Cserbo, David Hasselhoff, and Bo Derek. It is directed by Anthony C. Ferrante from a screenplay by Thunder Levin. The soundtrack is out digitally July 17th, and on CD on August 14th.

Related posts: