Panel from Dark Mysteries comic book issue #9 by drawn by John D'Agostino, October 1952
Sometimes, comparing a new band to a more familiar, established artist can be a good thing. Sure, sometimes it's just laziness to make comparisons instead of actually trying to describe what the music is like, but unless you're really good at writing about music, a straight-forward description can be just as useless. Take Surfer Blood, for instance. The initial stuff I read about this new Florida band made them sound like another in a long line of generic indie-schmindie Pitchfork-approved bands. But I'll admit that the comparisons to early Weezer made me sit up and pay attention a little more, and I'm not even a huge Weezer fan. I'd heard the Surfer Blood single, "Swim", and I hadn't really heard any Weezerness in it. Ultimately, I think that this comparison is a red herring, but it got me to dig a little deeper.
Of course, this is all a set-up for me making my own lazy comparison. I know that this is not an en vogue reference point, but Astro Coast sounds a lot to me like the first Shins record, Oh Inverted World, but recorded in an apartment with slightly less intolerant neighbors. It has that same "we recorded this at a pretty low volume and then added a lot of reverb" feel to it. It also has the same Kinks-by-way-of-the-Cure guitar sound. And it has hooks. That's really the thing that elevates this record above bog-standard blog-hype indie - the hooks are better. The first four songs on the album are about as good as you could ask for, unless kinda-generic guitar pop makes you break out in hives. It's not a perfect record - "Twin Peaks", arguably the album's most Weezer-influenced track, is a lyrical low point of juvenilia, and putting the album's two longest (and slowest) songs as the penultimate tracks is a questionable choice. Both songs ("Slow Jabroni" and "Anchorage") build to nice crescendos but they kind of follow the same template.
Surfer Blood is at their best when they stick to poppy, reverbed-out ditties like "Swim" and the album's excellent closing song, "Catholic Pagans". That song even has a Beach-Boys vocal breakdown that wins automatic brownie points from me. You might be able to tell that I'm still trying to convince myself that this album isn't just a "flavor of the month" thing for whatever reason, but I'm pretty sure at this point that I like this a lot. I just hope their career arc goes better than similar bands that got Pitchfork attention in the past.
"Swim" by Surfer Blood
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