The bros in Surfer Blood either have great luck or a damn good sense of timing. Their monster single “Swim (To Reach the End)” dropped just as the indie scene was abuzz with words like “beachy,” “sunny,” and “summery,” making its way onto everyone’s favorite summer mixtape. But even the best albums of the chillwave and beach-pop movements might as well have “2009” stamped on their covers, diminishing any serious legacy except nostalgia (think Duran Duran as opposed to New Order). Surfer Blood managed to avoid this pitfall by waiting for the movement’s hype to pass. Audiences now have to judge the band—and their newest album, Astro Coast—on their terms.
Given their penchant for sweet harmonies, catchy melodies, and ridiculous hooks, they are most properly lumped under “guitar pop”—specifically the genre’s indier side: Teenage Fanclub, (early) Weezer, and the Shins—although they do still draw on some surf-rock influences, too. The album has a proudly muddy sound, a style that sounds even better in a post-shitgaze world. It’s nice to know that it’s still possible to sound endearingly low-budget without sounding “bad.”
Despite sounding low-budget, the group never comes off as amateur. They wield their hooks sparingly, never wearing out their welcome in the way a lesser group might. The occasional clumsiness of their lyrics—the otherwise excellent “Twin Peaks” contains the lines “Let’s have fun at the video store/with Blue Velvet and other titles”—is excusable in the recent history of guitar pop acts.
With the Shins and the Strokes all but entirely broken up, and Vampire Weekend and Phoenix feeling too similar to their predecessors to represent a new generation, there’s a hole to fill in our collective heart with the sign “kind of underground pop/rock” hanging above it. The band sounds too “indie” to fill the Strokes’ shoes—that’s a spot best left for Free Energy when their album drops in May—but they’re lined up to be the Shins for a new generation.
Voice’s Choices: “Swim (To Reach the End),” “Floating Vibes,” “Take It Easy”
