Name: Whacha Doit For by The Ship Breakers
Duration: 3 min 25 s
Description: A song about eyes in the sky and waking up in the morning with existential crises.

A song about eyes in the sky and waking up in the morning with existential crises.

Whacha Doit For



A thing has to be destroyed before the process of regeneration can take place. For singer/guitarist Derryn Wong and drummer Bang Ong, forming another act meant coming out of the ruins of one of Singapore's most successful, and most short-lived, rock and roll bands. If you ask them, living a life without albums, forty-date tours and endless appearances was easy - but trying to stop music from being made for its own sake proved nigh-on impossible. 

It wasn't until experienced bassist and longtime friend, Lyndon Long came, ahem, along, that the pieces fell into place eventually, and what was a half-arsed, half-joke attempt at appeasing their Muses became a full-fanny, full-joke stab at making some real music people might actually enjoy. 

“We've jammed together for years, on and off. It just never got serious enough to warrant a full shot," says Derryn. "But I think we all realised we might actually, literally die before making something 'proper', and that gave us quite some momentum." 

The hard-rock roots mentioned still run deep, but those tendencies have been tempered with a spectrum of influences, along with what the band would like to think of as wisdom, and not just age. Some first listeners have said that The Ship Breakers call to mind modern rock bands like Kings of Leon, but the Breakers are also known for throwing in surprises for their listeners, going from Aerosmith blues crunch to near country gospel in a single song. 

Long sums it up well by saying, "We're not really cataloguing influences and writing to suit, the song-writing process has been very organic, just seeing what comes up in the mix. We don't write songs with strange structures on purpose, but if one of us comes up with something we usually go, "Why not?" and give it a go. If you listen to what we have so far, in full, you'll see there are other simpler, but equally satisfying cuts too." 

What the Breakers hope to achieve is really quite simple, as Bang sums it up: " As long as we can make music some people will love, give them a great time performing the ever-loving shit out of it, as long as we're not working on the docks, the union's not on strike, or down on our luck that gets tough, so tough, we'll be pretty happy." 