Goodbye Guitar [LP]

Vinyl LP pressing. When We Versus the Shark formed in 2003, the group's members were barely in their 20s and living in three different states. The math rock foursome converged on the music hub of Athens, Georgia as a homebase and promptly set about storming the town's gates. Starting with their debut album Ruin Everything!, the group kicked up a screwy racket of Dischord-ant guitars, noisy synths, and electro-shock rhythms. The group called it a day in 2009 and scattered to the four winds once more. In 2015, upon revisiting archival demos, Fields determined: there was plenty of gold left to be spun and plenty of notes (trust us, plenty) yet to be played. Putting the long-awaited final touches on some unfinished bangers and uncorking some new gems, the group quietly converged in the Classic City a handful of times over the next few years to make Goodbye Guitar. Recorded with the band's longtime studio collaborator Mike Albanese (Maserati/Cinemechanica) and mastered by Joel Hatstat (Cinemechanica), the ten-song firecracker LP is at once an energetic return to form and a rediscovered wellspring of joy. With their youthful anxieties (mostly) left in the past, Goodbye Guitar is the sound of four people having the time of their lives playing together.