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Shocore get by with a little help from their friends on Evilution.
BY MATT MERNAGH
“If there is anyone bad to the bone, it’s us,”
says Shocore’s lead singer Core White. He and guitarist Sho Murray
subscribe to a few simple rock & roll philosophies which many of
today’s modern rockers have cast aside. On their sophomore opus,
Evilution, they’ve taken their party hard antics and infused
them with beats and loud, balls-out guitar riffage.
To come up with this successful marriage of attitude
and arena rock they kept a keg of beer chilled in the studio. “It
was pretty mellow, like the last one. In the day was recording and in
the evening there was beer. It was low key. We concentrated a bit more
on the songwriting than last time but we kept the vibe the same, trying
to have friends come in and perform parts on different songs. We kept
it enjoyable and light. It wasn’t super work or heavy pressure.
It wasn’t like we were worrying, ‘Oh God, we have to write
another ‘Bonecracker’. We didn’t really catch that vibe.”
He jests, “Maybe we should have.”
The song ‘Bonecracker’ from their debut
Devil Rock Disco had many critics tagging Shocore as one hit
wonders. They’ve silenced the hacks by releasing ‘Right On’,
one of the many highlights of Evilution. Other standouts on the
14 song disc include the beat heavy ‘Good Talk’ and the barroom
brawler ‘Fist Fight At Dawn’. Shocore enlisted Holly McNarland
to provide a seductive tone on ‘Good Talk’ while the Headstones’
Hugh Dillon adds a ruffian vibe to ‘Fist Fight’.
The band had ‘Good Talk’ written as a rock
song with the same chorus but it didn’t make Devil Rock Disco.
“Something wasn’t right,” says White. “We split
it apart and put another piece in. Then it became two songs. The evolution
of the song came about as I was listening to the beats. I started to
think of that Yello song ‘Oh Yeah’, and then I said to Sho,
‘Put the beat in the backroom, put the beat in the backroom.’
And he was like, ‘Yeah that’s wicked.’ Then I asked,
‘Should I write more lyrics for it?’ ‘No it’s wicked!
Keep it simple, buddy.’”
As to McNarland’s involvement, she and Shocore
share the same tour manager. She took a disc of mixes out on the road
with her “and she totally loved the song. He called us up and said,
‘Holly really likes the song.’ ‘Well, then she should
sing on it’ was our response.”
As for hooking up with Dillon, the lead singer explains:
“Hugh and I have been talking about it for a long time. Sho was
into it, too. We did two tours with them. I’ve been friends with
Hugh since about ‘91. We always talked about it. Sho put the song
together on an acoustic and I thought it’d be perfect to do with
the Headstones. We called them up and said, ‘Hey, what are you
doing?’ They were in pre-production for their album and had some
studio time so we flew out there for the day.”
Shocore weren’t frightened that having McNarland
and Dillon on Evilution would overshadow the rest of the record.
“Who gives a s**t,” responds Core. “They’re good
songs. I think they’re cool songs. I’m glad we had the opportunity.
On Devil Rock Disco, we brought in our friends but nobody knew
who they were. This time we had a bit more power so we could use our
friends who have management and record labels. It’s the same thing
as last time, just our friends have bigger names.”
Another aspect to Shocore is their ability to entertain
live. On their last tour they employed the sexy dance troupe All You
Can Eat, but they have other plans this time. “We’ve commissioned
the special effects company Flesh And Fantasy to make seven-foot-high
bobble heads of Sho and me. I’m not kidding you, man. They’ll
do what bobble heads do. Hopefully there’ll be enough vibration
on the stage to have them bobble. Then we can just walk up to them on
stage and punch them in the head.”
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