There's plenty to like about Astro Coast, the debut LP from the youthful Floridians in Surfer Blood, but first and foremost it's a great guitar album. So what exactly does that mean these days? Often, it's a reference to either a display of astounding technical chops or innovative use of tone and texture, qualities which, to be quite honest, aren't particularly present here. This is a great guitar album in the way Weezer's Blue Album, Built to Spill's Keep It Like a Secret, or, more recently, Japandroids' Post-Nothing are: six-strings serve as a multiplier for hooks, making it every bit as easy and fun to air guitar with as it is to sing along to.
Nowhere is this more true than on their breakout single "Swim", which spent the second half of last year generating so much praise that it threatened to make any future album unnecessary or future hype redundant. But even after so many listens, its snowblind-ish reverb is still disorienting-- especially contrasted with its crisp, power-chord hook. It may sound like they're hitting you with their best shot, but after an impassioned "oh oh oh!" from singer John Paul Pitts, Surfer Blood explodes into an even bigger chorus and "Swim" becomes almost overpoweringly fist-pumping.
While "Swim" might just remind you of any number of Buzz Bin one-offs now stocking whatever's left of the used-CD store racket, Astro Coast has a strong supporting cast. Throughout, even the titles remark upon how each could've evolved from a killer guitar part into a full-on song-- "Floating Vibes", "Harmonix", "Neighbour Riffs". "Floating Vibes" lumbers with a chest-puffing, two-chord stomp that could evoke either Angus Young or Stephen Malkmus, before the guitars dovetail-- one chiming and light, the other a vocal-leading riff that makes Pitts' handling of the melodic contours sound effortless. The melodic intuitiveness of Astro Coast is in large part due to the interplay heard on "Floating Vibes"-- if every riff is stand-alone hummable, then the vocals take care of themselves.
Surfer Blood know from a good hook, but perhaps what's more promising is how most of their compositions build to their rewards. "Take It Easy" does the opposite at its outset, but by its midpoint the fidgety rhythms cool to a mesmerizing motorik that's continued on "Harmonix". "Slow Jabroni" is lonesome and crowded, distorted acoustics serving as a dusty backdrop for Pitts' Isaac Brock-ian carny barking. The riff that introduces "Anchorage" is as blunt as its sentiments ("I don't want to spin my wheels/ I don't got no wheels to spin"), but its second half unfurls a major-key riff that evokes the roomier compositions of Dinosaur Jr. Putting the record's two longest songs back-to-back might not be the canniest bit of sequencing, but it shows the confidence Surfer Blood have in their ability to escape the confines of three-minute power-pop.
Though they hail from West Palm Beach and come at the tail-end of 2009's indie feel-good beach party, for all of the oceanic imagery that the band name, album title, and cover art convey, Astro Coast is lyrically landlocked and lonely. Pitts is straightforward when he's not being shrouded by the springy reverb favored by the Shins' James Mercer, and at points, he reads pointedly early-00s emo. Topics of concern include confusion about romance, confusion about friendship, confusion about the future, confusion about religion. It's hard not to think that most of Astro Coast was borne of a relationship dissolved by distance, especially if we're to take the otherwise chipper "Twin Peaks" at face value: Pitts travels to Syracuse, watches David Lynch films, and wrenches out lyrics of sexual frustration that suggest most of the drive was spent listening to Pinkerton.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Surfer Blood spent the latter part of 2009 touring with Japandroids, who, along with BOAT and Cymbals Eat Guitars align in a faux-genre some of us have jokingly referred to as "alt-bro"-- guitar-heavy indie rock that's probably influenced by Pavement, likely about girls, and almost certainly made by people who at first blush sound more fun to get a beer with than, say, Dirty Projectors. But it's unfair to think of Astro Coast as reactionary in some way to the more overtly ambitious indie stars of last year-- there are no chamber sections, no pocket harmonies, no integration of West African rhythms (ok, there's some of that). But ambition can just as easily manifest itself as a desire to create a relentlessly catchy, "classic indie" album in your own dorm room, and if that's what Surfer Blood set out to do, Astro Coast succeeds wildly.
