Beach Fossils

Beach Fossils (Captured Tracks, 05.2010)

For: Real Estate, The Clientele, Yo La Tengo, Sleepover

Byline: Breezy, summery lo-fi sweetness from the indomitable Captured Tracks label.

Summer albums. You either love to hate them, or you hate that you love them so much. I am going to tip the scales here and say I am absolutely in love with this album. No begruding "yeah, it's goood, buuut..." I am smitten. Released on Memorial Day, Brooklyn's Beach Fossils revel in ubiquity... the clean single note guitar lines, cardboard drumming, and washed out vocals are designed to tread lightly, as to not intrude on your beach party, summer road trip, or back deck kegger overlooking a moonlight beach (as beer commercials have lead me to believe happen on a regular basis). When it comes to hooks, Beach Fossils choose to embed these deep into Dustin Payseur's rambling guitar lines instead of the standard verse-chorus arrangement. In fact, aside from the strong vocal melodies on each song, there is nary a vocal hook on the whole album. Things get dodgy when Payseur's floating vocals try to compete with the already overstated guitar lines. This misstep occurs only occasionally, most notably on the album's most grating song "Vacation". Other than that Beach Fossils is pitch-perfect. The 11 songs swim by in a way that simultaneously enraptures you while lulling you into the haze of a sunset captured on 8mm film. Things don't get much brighter or warmer.

While not having much ambition to rise out and above the current musical landscape of similar lo-fi summer boardwalk bands, there isn't much to complain about either. Musically astute, Payseur's guitar work is top notch, creating memorable, hummable hooks that serve vehicle for the album's emotional weight. Beach Fossils evoke an emotion, it is just difficult to categorize what that is. While incessantly up-tempo, a pervading sense of nostalgia saturates the album. Perhaps Beach Fossils (as the name would imply) isn't so much a summer lived in right now, but an adolescent summer vacation remembered through a picture album stored in the wood paneled living room of your parents house. Either way, Beach Fossils is the best summer album of 2010, or 1993.

Ryan H.

Beach Fossils Myspace

Blank Dogs

Phrases EP (Captured Tracks, 2010)

For: Blessure Grave, The Crocodiles, Joy Division

Byline: Goth-bedroom pop

Captured Tracks has really made some headway this year releasing consistently amazing records and perhaps single-handedly ushering in a first-wave goth revival. The label's newest acquisition to their already stellar roster is this 2009 slacker/goth-pop blog fav. Blank Dogs. We're backtracking a little bit here in anticipation of the band's third, forthcoming full-length (and first for Captured Tracks) this month, but what we have in the way of this four song EP is leaving us salivating... so much so we had to say something. Given the above comparisons you probably already have an idea of what Blank Dogs are working with. Coming out of 2008's summer fuzz-pop explosion, Blank Dogs steer these new tracks out of the warm analog hiss and into the cold, bored austerity of 80's post-punk and pop. Joy Division is almost too easy of a comparison, with lockstep bass line-following, ice-cold synth lines and consistently wicked guitar riffing. But where Joy Division and their black-clad minions were consistently bleak, Blank Dogs find ways to filter the "what-do-we-care" surf bum mentality of those summer '08 lo-fi luminaries through the icy landscape of a Brooklyn winter. The result is more akin to Echo and the Bunnymen type jangle-pop melancholia, especially on the album standout "Blurred Tonight." A backwards steel drum comes out of nowhere, punching a hole in the the angular guitar playing and constant click track. This recent prospect of a new wave of bedroom-goth bands making names for themselves, most of them associated with Captured Tracks (with Blank Dogs, Blessure Grave, Soft Moon, and Crocodiles) has me thinking it might be time to dust off that old Killing Joke T-Shirt.

Ryan H.

Blank Dogs Myspace