Links:

Surfer Blood on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/surferblood
Kanine Records Home Page: http://kaninerecords.com/

Surfer Blood bring forth from the blue-green sea foam a sound not wholly original, yet still updated enough to call their own. Mixing in ’60s vocal styling, Indie-Rock/Brit-Power Pop guitar and drum hooks, a Surf-Rock feel (surprise), and even some British-influenced Shoegaze all at once. So, dispensing with the sea of music labels (a water pun… way too many more to come), let’s leave the lake bed and get to the substance of the album, shell we?

The record for the most part is a solid album, not allowing itself to be drugged out in the undertow of experimentation that makes many bands sound like just a studio band, yet able to play music in a hundred different styles but never having their own. Too many musicians reach for this in their first couple of bands as they search like lifeguards for a sound.  This being said, there is a single track that seems a bit out of place, awash in the band’s appreciation for British Shoegaze — a little ditty called “Harmonix.” Using guitar harmonics and arpeggios, spilling over mechanic drums , this track is more than a simple wave to early ’80s Cure.

The other tracks on Astro Coast are less of a direct borrowing , and more original in arrangement. Tracks of mention are “Anchorage” and “Catholic Pagans.”  The former track comes out noisy and poppy, diving right in with drums and ringing brass. The reverb guitars pour in and maintain a Beach Boys-meet-The-Smiths feel. Spilling on top of this are the echoic vocals evaporating and condensing over the 6+ minute voyage. The later track seeps in with ’60s ballad arpeggios and some guitar processing, and a vocal structure that is at once poppy and basic washes in to keep our appetites wetted.

According to the band’s MySpace page, Surfer blood swim in from Palm Beach, Florida. Meeting in their freshman year of college, Astro Coast was recorded in their dorm rooms, and this involved spending their college scholarship money to do so.  They will be spending the first part of the new year touring in support of the new album.

Bad water pun count: 16. yeah. Drink it in.

When I heard Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction Soundtrack and noticed that the piece de resistance was Dick Dale’s “Miserlou,” I think I did an air high-five to an imaginary Tarantino that day. I thank the man for turning that song into a fistful of rock and roll chaos because it wasn’t like the movie A Swingin’ Affair did the trick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU0RMV_II8). Robert Palmer’s girls swing harder than those cats behind him.

Unlike a lot of kids in the ‘90s who would say Dick who(?), Pulp Fiction was not the first time I heard Dick Dale, and “Miserlou” was not my initiation to the man with that developed surf reverbagasm. The song that immediately hooked me in was “Let’s Go Trippin’.”

It was late at night, a cigarette haze filled a room. It was about as cold as a late autumn Indiana night could get, but the house party that lit up every weekend was particularly jiving this night as a crazy surf sound rocked the house. Poets, musicians, burn outs, and up and comers mingled to the sleek sounds of a guitar and sax blaring like a Coup de Ville roaring out of control. Cash Flagg adorned a TV on the back of the room. 2 a.m. and we were white-hot man. Even all of these years later, Dale’s sound still rings out like a teenage riot. I made the person running the shindig to play that album over again. Little did I know at the time that it was Surfer’s Choice.

In the mid ‘50s, when Leo Fender asked Dale to beat his Fender Stratocaster model to death, who knew that it would create a surf music tsunami and give out that signature “reverberation” sound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverberation). “(Fender) became like a dad to me,” said Dale (http://www.gearwire.com/media/dick-dale.mov).

During his early days, in his plight to blow up one amp after another, Dale developed the “chopping” method of guitar playing by using 50- and 60-gauge strings (http://www.roctober.com/roctober/greatness/dickdale.html). And it came the kids running to his gigs.

Much like Jimi Hendrix, Dale was forced to play a right-handed guitar for a left-handed guitarist. Instead of re-stringing the guitar, unlike Hendrix, he played the guitar upside down and re-interpreted the notes from his mind to his hands. This and the heavy string gauges prompted him to play hard and loud. He wanted to mimic the sound of the waves, and for him that is what defines the surf sound. It’s not the reverb.

For Surfer’s Choice, there is no reverb to be had. Dale had not developed it yet. There was nothing to get in front of the his unique playing, which created some of the most timeless songs in his career, including the illustrious “Miserlou,” which there are two versions on the release. There is the one we are all familiar with and then there is “Miserlou Twist,” a version that has an added string section and slight changes in the song construction. The strings give the song boundaries as to where the guitar can go and sounds like the basis for many Bollywood songs. While Martin Denny was creating exotic sounds in a lustful orchestrated canopy, Dick Dale was bashing it over the head with power and force.

Dale shows that he does not need be a steam train with his strumming and the non-surf songs provide as much a delight. “Mr. Peppermint Man” is a great doo wop rock and roll song. “Night Owl” is this quirky pop rock ditty that makes it irresistible not to swoon to.

And peppered in between all of this are great surf stomps like “Shake ‘N’ Stomp,” the hot rod rocker “Del-Tone Rock,” and another timeless classic “A Run For Life,” to end the album with a archaic bang.

If this album is not somewhere in your personal rock and roll albums of all time list, then it should be.

Cross-Reference: The Ventures, Gene Grupa, The Defenders