Orange County-based surf-industry giant Clark Foam's sudden closure last December stoked fears the world over that the custom surf boards popular since the 1960s would be replaced by mass-produced models deemed fit only for noobs. Musically, of course, the good guys have already lost. The innocent grandeur of the Beach Boys and the dizzying guitar ripples of Dick Dale or the Ventures have long since faded into the Dave Matthews lullabies of Jack Johnson, the word's luckiest human being.
Over the course of three albums, Echo Park beach bums the Tyde have posed an alternative of sorts, with varying degrees of success. The group's core lineup remains intact on newest effort Three's Co., natural successor to 2001's Once and 2003's Twice. Singer/guitarist Darren Rademaker and brother Brent played together in a shoegaze-influenced 90s band, Further (the latter Rademaker also belongs to Byrdsian space cowboys Beachwood Sparks); Darren's wife Ann Do Rademaker handles keyboards. Like its predecessors, Three's Co. mixes the sun-soaked power pop proclivities of Teenage Fanclub with the sylvan jangle of Felt, though the Tyde too often seem afraid to really make waves.
Maybe that's because they're thinking too much about other records-- a common plight, I confess. The Tyde's love of surfing, so evident on the last album in tracks like boogie-woogie "Shortboard City", is present here mostly in spirit, as the songs more frequently turn to music-geek griping and self-conscious reference-making. "To the pastiche police/ Jealousy will get you nowhere," Rademaker spits through pre-2005 Strokes distortion on "Brock Landers", backed rather inconspicuously by the Thrills' equally seashore-sick Conor Deasy. "The girls just keep on singing at the lamest shows," Rademaker whines more nasally on draggy, druggy "Lamest Shows". Copping a swampy two-step close to Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed" for the verses of "Ltd. Appeal", Rademaker cannonballs into a harmony-drenched chorus of forced rhymes, noting, "It won't matter who I steal my sound from."
He's right, but probably for the wrong reasons: Despite their varied and estimable antecedents, the Tyde's tunes tend to spill together, notwithstanding a few catchy moments. Like "County Line", a "Victoria"-joyous stomper, or vivid JAMC romance "Separate Cars". But then Maroon 5 bassist Mickey Madden guests, apropos of nothing, on "Pilot", a brash, choppy I'll-be-there-for-you ("When your dreams have let you down/ I'm the one who'll come around"). "Aloha Breeze" reclines into lap-steel balladry, while "Glassbottom Lights" jumps from chunky power chords to dreamy, synth-washed choruses to, on the U.S. version's bonus tracks, a moody James Figurine dance-pop remix. If everybody had an ocean, everybody'd still be surfing, but Three's Co. isn't ushering in a new golden age of foam quite yet. Just one word, surfers: plastics.
