The Sharking

by Tim Den

Anyone who’s familiar with Boston’s local scene will recognize the name Marc Flynn: Once the co-vocalist of Big D And The Kids Table, he also co-led the punchy-yet-quirkily melodic Drexel with current The Lot Six member Aaron Sinclair. Having been relatively silent since Drexel went kaput, Flynn has returned with The Sharking, the logical continuation of the acoustic stuff he’d been dabbling with toward the end of Drexel. The strength of Flynn’s songs has always been the off-kilter melodic vocals, and The Sharking puts ’em front and center. Evoking later-period Elvis Costello records such as Mighty Like a Rose and Brutal Youth, Flynn somehow crams playful verbal meter (well-pronounced too, mind you) and surprising melodic twists-and-turns into a deceivingly “pop” aesthetic, all the while his more than capable backing band muscularly accentuates the right moments (not unlike The Attractions). What you get are songs smart enough to be in the same league as Spoon, but catchy enough to be paired up with Ad Frank or The Apples In Stereo. It’s not only great to witness the return of one of Boston’s most refreshing songwriters, but to see that some people do still write songs without preconceived notions of genre or hipness.
(www.thesharking.com)