Five years isn’t really a long time, but in the lifespan of a band half a decade can feel like an eternity. Back in 2010, Florida’s Surfer Blood were riding high on the success of Astro Coast (deservedly so, considering how great that record is. Go back and listen to "Swim" to jog your memory). A year later, the band released an EP, Tarot Classics, and busied themselves with endless touring, including a dream stint opening for the Pixies. Though they just seemed like a bunch of kids from Florida, the band—in particular frontman and primary songwriter John Paul Pitts—ripped like an heir apparent for the guitar-pop throne previously kept warm by the likes of Stephen Malkmus or Rivers Cuomo.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. In 2012, just before the recording of the band’s major label debut, Pitts was arrested (though never officially charged) after a physical altercation with his then girlfriend. Though details of the events of that night remain vague (you can read Pitts’ statement on the incident at the band’s website), the fallout from the arrest (and the seemingly endless amount of online discussion that ensued) did irrevocable damage. As a result, 2013’s Pythons seemed to emerge from under a dark cloud—a fraught, anxious record that, whether intentional or not, played out like an anguished mea culpa. A year after its release, the band was dropped from Warner Brothers. The future seemed nothing if not uncertain.
So now, some five years after their debut, Surfer Blood return with 1000 Palms, a record that tries (and occasionally succeeds) at recapturing the messy exuberance of their debut. Self-recorded by the band largely in the living room of drummer Tyler Schwarz' parents’ house (and later nicely mixed by Rob Schnapf), the record is not only surprisingly upbeat, but surprisingly clean-sounding as well. Freed from the constraints of a major label ("We weren’t better off in paradise/ All we ever got were parasites" remarks Pitts on "Dorian") the band take advantage of their newfound autonomy to unpack some of the psychic trauma they've endured over the past few years. And while one might expect this to be an opportunity for some cathartic guitar shredding, 1000 Palms is a little short on the epic riffs and the earworm hooks of earlier albums, in favor of tastefully employed synths and an overabundance of blandly pretty mid-tempo tracks, which, while never terrible, still feel oddly muted.
The first five tracks establish a kind of emotional palette that, taken on their own, would make for a killer EP. Album opener "Grand Inquisitor" is big and booming—packed with the kind of guitar squalling and turn-on-a-dime signature changes that could almost pass for an old Pale Saints track (it helps that Pitt’s voice is a dead ringer for Pale Saints’ Ian Masters)—and evidences the kind of dynamic that made early Surfer Blood records fun. "You wrote the finest record I’d ever heard," sings Pitt, "It never occurred that you’d rather throw it all away/ Launch the CD-R into the bay." On "Island" Pitt details a kind of creative discontent that pops up again and again on Palms: "A shadow fell on me today/ It paralyzed my tongue, eclipsed my brain" while the guitars morph from overdriven fuzz into melodic lines reminiscent of early-'80s new wave.
The album's poppiest moments are often married to Pitt’s most pained sentiments, as on "Feast/Famine" where Unrest-like guitar jangle is set against Pitt’s own self-doubt: "Sometimes I feel out touch with who I am/ I can’t see no symmetry/ It’s feast or famine." 1000 Palms vacillates between songs about frustration and songs about love, which themselves run the gamut from endearingly sweet (the gorgeous New Year’s Eve romance of "I Can’t Explain") to the treacly and forgettable. 1000 Palms is consistently lovely and never terribly misfires, but in its same-sounding second half you can't help but wish it fired at least a little harder.
Ultimately, 1000 Palms sounds like emotional throat-clearing, the transitional sound of a band finding their bearings, resetting their dials, and getting back on their feet in the wake of a lot of personal and professional turmoil. One would hope this would prove to be a pivotal turning point for the group, but the recent news of guitarist Thomas Fekete’s illness (he’s been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer) seems yet another blow to the now-beleaguered band. 1000 Palms does an admirable job of squaring itself with the past, as evidenced on album closer "NW Passage"—an acoustic missive about breaking through impossible frozen barriers, forgiving and forgetting, and learning to get up again after falling face-first in the mud—but it ultimately all feels a bit tepid and desperately polite. Make no mistake, it’s all good, this business of letting go of bad baggage, but now that they’ve done so, here’s hoping Surfer Blood are more willing to stick their necks out next time and jump headlong back into the fray.
