San
Francisco Bay
Guardian
Interview (November 2006)
Chico News
and Review
Interview & show
writeup with Barbara Manning! (April 12, 2007)
Pacific Noise
Video interview & live footage
(El Rio, April 2006)
The Bay
Bridged
Audio
interview podcast (December 2006)
West
Add Radio
Audio interview and
guest radio set (August 2007)
SF
Station
Inteview (November
2007)
Audiofobia.com
Interview,
Victor's
tour diary, & live footage (PERU - February 2008)
CD
reviews
Mesh Magazine
The
Fucking Ocean's debut
full-length, Le Main Rouge, is a somewhat frantic but never grating
post-punk album in the vain of Erase Eratta and The Ex. The band weaves
in out of styles within each song. The noodle-y guitars of the opening
track, "Literacy Test" give way to urgent, staccato chords, which give
way to only bass and drums. "Adam" features off-kilter rhythms which
give way to a sugary guitar riff in the middle and confrontational
pro-choice lyrics, "Do you remember when women used to have to risk
their lives just to live again?" The most melodic song, "Bombs in the
Underground" is also the fullest sounding track, and even mixes a bit
of dub-sounding bass and guitar playing. "Elias (Has Been Waiting For
An Hour)" features some amazing drumming and is the album's standout
track. -Brian Brophy
KZSU Stanford
Adrenalized guitar rock... angular,
dynamic, dark, insistent, new-wavey, and no-wavey, with nods to
Krautrock & '60s spy-rock! Male and female vocals, yelled more
often than sung. 11 tracks that zip by in 26 minutes. Debut LP from
local four piece includes two KZSU DJs/Stanford students. Their
eponymous debut EP had a nice run in our top 10 in Feb 2006. Great
production & sound thanks to SF's Tiny Telephone studios, with
prominent bass reminiscent of Young Marble Giants and Bush Tetras.
Songs mid-fast, end cold unless marked. (The band's name is a
mishearing of a drug-baked Lou Reed singing the words "foggy notion."
On air say "effing ocean.") Play with Mika Miko, James Chance & The
Contortions, The Slits, Erase Errata, DNA, The Bush Tetras,
Electrelane, & fast songs by Joy Division. All GREAT. -Murray
Show
write-ups
Impose Magazine
Photos and brief
review of great show at Silent Barn with Parts & Labor, dd/mm/yyyy,
knyfe hyts, & gerty farish! (17 Nov 2007)
Fecal Face
Photos and review of Mission Creek
Festival (El Rio, 20 May 2006)
SF
Weekly -
December 2, 2006
Wielding sounds influenced by Ian
MacKaye bands, no-wave, and Erase Errata, local trio the Fucking Ocean
grips short songs by the neck, rips them to shreds, and moves on — but
not because it doesn't love them. Compact, complicated flashes of drum
barrage and guitar blast back up passionate, syncopated screams from
two boys and a lady. Matt Swagler, John Nguyen, and Marcella Gries
switch instruments and vocal time like a well-practiced volleyball
team. It's like Sonic Youth highly caffeinated and itchy, or a happier
D.C. hardcore band. A CD, Le Main Rouge, recorded at Oakland's Tiny
Telephone studio and released earlier this month on Double Negative
Records, delivers more of same, with clean-cut sharps and perfectly
hairy fuzzes. Death of a Party and Postcoitus open. -Hiya
Swanhuyser
SF Bay Guardian -
April
5, 2006
San
Francisco post-punkers the
Fucking Ocean generate delightfully angular and beautiful songs to
transform their audience into a sea of head-nodding, knee-shaking
clones. Marcella Gries, Matthew Swagler, Elias, and
John Nguyen rotate between punchy guitar, boxy percussion, Ian
MacKaye-like yelps and roars, and pulsing bass lines, with Rylee
McGowan chiming in with keyboard textures. "We're like a
volleyball team," Gries says with a laugh. Tonight they're doing
double duty, first opening for pop-rock darlings Boyskout at Mezzanine,
then jumping over to El Rio to headline a benefit for a new documentary
about a veteran Tenderloin cabaret performer. "We'll be flushed,
sweaty, and ready to dance!" Gries assures me. -Eliana Fiore
SF
Weekly -
October 19, 2005
It's
now possible to love a scrappy
local band without ever having seen it, thanks to the Internet.
So it goes with the Fucking Ocean. I've never been to a show, but
I know through stealthy online research (aka MySpace) that FO makes
sharp-edged art-rocky songs that take cues from the Fall and Gang of
Four. An elegantly angular guitar characterizes the band's
sound: Whose is it? We do need to go to the show to find
that out. -Hiya Swanhuyser