You've heard Summer Hymns' new album before. Maybe not the record itself, but the elements are familiar: the gentleness of Danielson Famile's quiet moments, the gushing sentimentality of recent Flaming Lips, the vocal affectations of recent Mercury Rev, and the kind of driftless, meandering melodies that never seem to go much of anywhere.
If what I just described nails down what you look for and enjoy in music, Backward Masks is probably right up your alley. If not, run, because this might be the most alarmingly tedious indie release of the year. The band's previous albums were infused with more Elephant 6-brand whimsy-- child-like vocals, manic instrumentation, brassy Beach Boys rip-offs, you know the drill-- and weren't so hushed or maudlin, nor half as predictable. Backward Masks, on the other hand, takes itself much more seriously. Acoustic instrumentation casts long shadows of reverb behind a voice that creaks with earnestness like a balsa-wood levee. The tempo never rises above a plod, and the mood never veers into anything so visceral as hate, anger, giddiness, distaste, or mild discomfort.
The double-tracked vocals of "Fearanoia" are, as usual, vaguely reminiscent of the Beach Boys, and the horns layered over the double-time outro (speeding it up from "beach cruiser" to "Rascal") in "Start Swimming" quicken the pulse ever so slightly. But Backward Masks is so petrified of taking risks that even the few surprises, like the wandering fuzz-bass in opener "Way You Walk", are mired in a suffocating blanket of forced agreeability. The song is otherwise rote with the conventions of cuddle-rock, without even a sharp lyric here or there to help elevate it above the mundane.
Instead, singer Zachary Gresham wants to "love you in the most beautiful ways" because "there's no reason to be afraid of love." Also, he's "traded [his] contacts for Hulk-colored contacts" which make everything "livid green" (obviously). Later, he's led to the realization that "baseball sucks and so does life/ I'm going on strike," but barring that, he'll join his friend who, "like a monkey," is "waiting for evolution to come on your little head."
It's to the point where I don't even blame the band. I just want to punch Wayne Coyne with a big pink fist for making this sap so viable for other musicians. I've typed "pleasant" and replaced it with synonyms so many times it doesn't even look like a word to me anymore. Spare me sunny warm-weather correlatives; put me in a hammock, spin it into a cocoon, and just light the fucker on fire. I'm choking on the summertime haze.
