Beach Fossils – "What A Pleasure" EP
Release Date: March 8th, 2011
Label: Captured Tracks
In the digital age there are more and more good to great
albums finding time in the ear space of listeners every year. It makes sense because simply put,
there are more records released and the major labels/radio stations are no longer the
only sources of discovery for music fans. While this barrage of new albums, one after another,
ultimately helps smaller bands find an audience,
there are major drawbacks. The
biggest problem that comes to mind is how quickly albums are judged, consumed,
and forgotten in a matter of months.
Even the two biggest buzz records in recent memory, Animal Collective’s
“Merriweather Post Pavilion” and Beach House’s “Teen Dream” shot out of the buzz
canon quickly, only to be afterthoughts halfway through the year, and
ultimately praised for a short time on year end lists. Since we can download an album weeks
before its release, it’s a regular occurrence to consume and discard a good
record before the scheduled release date.
It’s nobody’s fault, the faucet is always on and great music is always
coming out. To keep up this
discarding is essential to staying “in the know”.
What becomes rare is an album that transcends the “now” and
within those weeks of sampling, cements itself as a record that can exist in
any moment. Some of my favorite
records of the last few years don’t even accomplish this feat. They were great for that specific time
but have lost some of their luster in the maturing process and it was obvious
from the first listen that this was their fate. When hearing a new record, very few sound both familiar and
new and exist in modern society without any pretense of what is cool at that
specific time. This brings us to
the first release of 2011 that answers the task of existing not in this
specific moment or trend, but as something that will be special forever. The album is What A Pleasure, the new
EP from New York’s Beach Fossils.
The most impressive accomplishment regarding What A
Pleasure is the ease in which each of the tracks work, one after another,
toward the greater goal of shaping an album and not to impress as individual
songs. It’s a group of musically
simplistic tracks that work as a whole to create a consistent mood rather than
a spattering of hits/singles surrounded by filler. From the start, a twinkling guitar radiates and never stops
until the robust twenty-three minutes have passed. It’s this one guitar tone that drives each song and acts as
a bridge from track to track. What A Pleasure feels like being on the end of
a kite; controlled drifting. The
songs allow the listener to float around with the melodies and vocals, but it’s
obvious that while you can take the music wherever you want, Beach Fossils are
the ones masterfully controlling the experience.
With their self-titled release in 2010, Beach Fossils were
slapped with the tag of being a lo-fi band. I can see why this was the immediate label, as the debut LP
featured shakier (lower quality) production and gobs of reverb on the
vocals. The reverb still exists on What A Pleasure but it’s surrounded by a cleaner production. What’s shocking is how music critics
are becoming dependent on genre labeling to classify how they feel about a
band/release. When I hear What A
Pleasure it sounds like a softer version of rock and I find no need to label
it under a made up genre to feel more comfortable defining/critiquing the
presented sound. It’s
actually refreshing to hear a newcomer in the “indie” scene move away from
genre specific music and just make music that sounds like a softer version of
rock. There are no flashy objects
to distract the listener; this is a straightforward presentation of eight solid
tracks and unlike other records the sounds can stand alone. Putting out a record in this current
climate that can’t fit into a nice little offshoot category is much more bold
and ultimately interesting than abstraction or experimentation that fits a
trendy genre.
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