Review: Beach Fossils - What a Pleasure

Artist: Beach Fossils
Title: What a Pleasure
Format: EP
Year: 2011
Label: Captured Tracks
Genre: Garage surf (What an awful place to su... nevermind)
Rating: 82 / 100

Every period probably has its own little waves of new kinds of music, it seems we're currently in the middle of a little wave of sunny lo-fi, reverb drenched garage bands, just some names (of which many have already been discussed somehwere on this blog): Tennis, The Babies, Vivian Girls, La Sera, Dum Dum Girls, Wild Nothing and the list goes on. If one still didn't notice which band will be reviewed here, but one read the list, one might miss one of the more important bands: Beach Fossils. While most of the aforementioned bands play the more punky, rock'ish type of music, Beach Fossils is definitely more on the laid-back, surf'ish, even a bit dreamy side of the spectrum, somewhat familiar to a band like Beach House or even Papercuts, but still with that typical lo-fi edge.

Now, when one thinks about the term lo-fi, what might come to mind are poorly produced garage groups, not interested in any kind of sound quality, but just putting a mic in their rehearsal space. Well this might be true in case of a band like PENS, but really, Beach Fossils is really enjoyable, even for those who have a certain aversion towards underproduced garage groups. I will even dare to say that Beach Fossils is quite poppy, even a bit catchy at times, everything in the context of this kind of music of course, but still... some modern day radio producers might even survive playing a track like Calyer on the radio, where Lady GaGa is normally the most underground act to receive any plays.

In comparison to their previous self-titled album some major improvements were made, production wise this EP is far superior; the bass is now clearly audible, and their (electronic?) drumkit sometimes even delivers something which might be called a groove. Another thing that really stands out on this EP, compared to their earlier works are the vocals, they are now, even with a shitload of reverb, very, very clear and fit perfectly within the overall picture of this band.  Everything put together one will hear a somewhat more evolved band, able to produce an EP which doesn't bore me at all. It might not be something to get amazingly excited about, but it's definitely their best effort yet, and will probably be played more often in the near future.

While the sun is gone, the transgenders appear,

Selwin.