Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

I'm getting a LITTLE tired of all this beach friendly music coming out lately. I mean... i dig it and all. It's just kind of over saturating the market at the moment. It seems like everyone and their brother wants to be in a beach summer pop band. Even though Surfer Blood definitely fall into this category (I mean c'mon... their name is SURFER BLOOD), they definitely do it a little differently than the rest. They remind me of a modern take on a pixies post punk sound mixed with an oi punk mentality...with more focus on being catchy rather than being witty. It's definitely a "guitar" album... and that's where it succeeds the most in my opinion. My favorite aspect of their music has to be the transformation that each song seems to take. Instead of a favoring a verse/chorus/verse style of writing, they focus on transforming the track so that by the time you reach the end it sounds like a different song than what you started with. A lot of bands try this and fail miserably, but these guys make these transitions seamless and natural. With all the mellow music coming out lately, it's nice to be able to this on (track 2 "Swim" is a catchy favorite) and do some fist pumping for a change. And not the Jersey Shore, "Guido" fist pumping.




Astro Coast