Absorbing all ocean metaphors between the 60s and the late 90s, surf rock has long been the medium of summer fun. But in the last decade of DIY spectacles splashing up an ocean-like internet arena, listeners fervently watched innumerable bands take the plunge into a larger online medium that mostly sounds like disorder. Of late it’s been either wipe-out, wash up deserted, get caught in riptides of messiah-like hype or judgmental dissent, or ride the wave long enough to finally earn high marks on their out-of-ten-scorecards and still see modest digital sustenance, see for example Animal Collective/Grizzly Bear/Vampire Weekend. Watching these bands be tested against mega waves of reception is like wondering which kid is going to go first in Lord of the Flies. But here’s Surfer Blood, a lightning rod through the cutthroat internet canonization of 00s indie. Astro Coast is a skillful and patient balancing act calmly recalling an anthology of pop, new-wave, and underground influences and then deftly rerouting it to listeners lost between Pandora and Pitchfork.
Surfer Blood – “Floating Vibes”
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Despite being written in the brig-like dorms of Florida USA Universities, Astro Coast bears significantly few marks of the College Try, an epithet made irrelevant by songwriter and singer John Paul Pitts, whose vast array of wise-beyond-his-20-or-so-years hooks smoothly break thumping rock-steady waves in carefully groomed skin of reverb that repels instead of attracts the sticky humidity in which his glow-rock classmates are steeped, see for example “Best Coast/Wavves.” Boyishly confident without a pubescent shrill, vocal melodies efficiently lilt their way around each song’s path-finding sharp-corner turns, such as in the elegantly riffed “Floating Vibes.” Stomping out the first guitar thrusts of this first track, mega waves are nothing with Surfer Blood’s cool approach. “If you’re moving out to the west/then you better learn how to surf…/I swear that ocean, it’d swallow you fully/And it might have to follow you home.” Save sometimes Surfer Blood’s coy insider-joke tones, “Take it Easy,” “Harmonix” “Twin Peaks,” “Fast Jabroni” etc., are sobering and trustworthy as twin guitars cleverly navigate these as well as Astro Coast’s more shadowy, idiosyncratic routes like “Anchorage” and “Slow Jabroni,” which both ultimately converge on the same brilliant silver lining.
Recently signing on to Canine Records, Surfer Blood now has the sponsorship to illustrate their uniquely idealistic thesis that channels rather than possesses entire decades of fun: warm nostalgia for 60s anthems (including surf-rock), caustic post-punk, heartfelt twee, anxious garage, corky afrobeat, and the brainy verve of Phoenix-like synthesis.