"Does it ever weird you out that I want to be with you, every minute of every hour and every day, too?" the unnamed, unauthorized focal character at the center of Christmas Island's debut, Blackout Summer, asks on "Weird You Out", the album's best and most defining cut. Honestly? Yes, you totally weird us out, dude. Unlike with most of the neurotic arrested development cases you come across in popular culture-- your Woody Allens, anyone who has Judd Apatow in their "five"-- this sadsack figure possesses literally no sense of self-deprecating humor, is constantly waxing pathetic, and yet is somehow no less endearing and sympathetic for it. Now whether these songs document the real-life romantic pinings of frontman Brian Island or are simply a batch of shaggy jams ripped from the lovesick diary of a 15-year-old beach punk, there's an underlying story arc that saves Blackout Summer from being just another collection of ramshackle bummer strummers.
Part of the burgeoning San Diego lo-fi scene that's home to seedy droners like Crocodiles and garage revivalists like the Soft Pack, three-pieced Christmas Island are the most obvious candidate for a middle-ground house band of the movement, their amateurish ambling rendered more charming with every heartbroken admission, typically undercut by a radiant guitar lick or a breezy little groove. It's this same sort of dichotomy that characterizes most of Blackout Summer: The sunniest numbers are usually about rejection, depression, or the inevitability of rejection and depression (the cheery "Doin' Swell" boasts the lyric, "He hung his head and cried, he hung his head and died") and the flatter, murkier numbers are usually the hard-line love song laments ("I Don't Care", a flip of the Ramones' song of the same name, is actually a lap-dog fantasy-- "I don't care what you wanna do... I will do anything with you"). The band itself was actually formed after Island and now-drummer Lucy Wehryl started dating, which is kind of surprising, seeing as most of the songs here sound like the hopeless brooding of a frustrated virgin-- if that shit flew with most girls, 80% of existing pop songs would vanish instantaneously. And even while the music itself might be too categorical or flat (the band never dares delineate from their brand of frayed, play-it-loose garage-pop), a curious and compelling little study in teenage misanthropy emerges, nicely defining a complex hormonal state and the dunderheaded frustration that accompanies.
Take "Dinosaurs", by all accounts a mercilessly dumb goof that proudly features lines like, "I can't believe you ever existed, I'm really bummed out that I missed it." But with Island's slouch-shouldered delivery of lines like, "I wish I could take a time machine, to a time before human beings," the song transforms into a simple confession of feeling out of place. It's especially apparent when wedged snugly up against "It's True", a less-nerdy version of "Dinosaurs" that's such a truly unbecoming song, so full of self-pity and doubt ("I don't know what the hell I'm doing, I'm no good at being human") that it's hard not to see the two sides of the typical adolescent experience coexist: one shrouded in pimpled vices, the other embarrassingly earnest. This eventually brings us to "Weird You Out", an unsettling climax that's as sadsack as it is nutjob, a hopeless final plea that hinges on the very creepy promise, "I'll see you at 10." Played as both a timid first-date confirmation and a chilly threat at the same time, it affords some much needed contextual support for Blackout Summer; you won't remember the chorus, but hopefully you remember feeling sorry for someone, maybe even yourself.
If any of this is deliberate, it works extremely well, though obviously not subtly. Ronettes-influenced slow burner "My Baby" closes things out, as girl-leaves-boy (or disputes existence of boy) and fuck-everything thoughts like, "It's like you're nonexistent" permeate the air, confirming what everyone but our protagonist saw coming. It's a neat little package, even if the music itself is so stubbornly unvaried. However, if over time Blackout Summer proves to be little more than a themeless accumulation of lonely complaints, we've got a serious problem. For now, we'll be gracious and wait for a second album before making plans to wash our hair the next time Christmas Island comes calling.
