Surfer Blood, Astro Coast

Go buy this album.  Right now.  Don’t bother reading this review.  Honestly, the time it takes you to read this could be better served searching the internet for a good deal on Astro Coast.   For the rest of you who enjoy reading a poorly reasoned and misinformed review, continue on.

I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun listening to an album, let alone a fun indie rock album.  I guess it takes a bunch of kids from Palm Beach to show the rest of us that music, above all else, should be a joy.

More than anything else, Astro Coast is a familiar-sounding album.  It’s an album that you bought in high school or college.  It’s the album that convinced you of the greatness of music but eventually fell to the wayside as you began to get too “serious” about your approach to music.   At its heart, Astro Coast is an homage to the greatness of ’90s power pop.  Rather than try to awe you with overblown solos, guitarist Thomas Fekete inspires you to grab your air guitar and cut loose.  It’s a wonderfully brilliant approach to crafting an effortless sound that displays Fekete’s skill, as well as his understanding of songwriting.

Astro Coast owes a great deal of its success to singer JP Pitts.  In a strange way, Pitts’ voice sounds new but familiar, as if someone updated the ’90s for a 2010 audience.  The entire time you listen, you’ll be referencing Pitts’ voice to some of the greats; I mean, try not to think about Issac Brock while listening to “Slow Jabroni.” It’s this beautiful common-sense approach to the guitar and lead singer JP Pitts’ nostalgic voice that culminates (albeit two songs into the album) into “Swim,” a triumph of power chords hooks and reverb-heavy vocals.  From the start, Surfer Blood swings for the fences and because of that creates an album that rekindles the simple delight of music.