Tag: Power Pop

Review: Honeymoon by Beach Bunny

FFO: early Best Coast, Diet Cig, surfing and crying

It may be late February, and we may be in the throes of winter (certainly here in New York, where upstate we got into the lovely sub-zero fahrenheit zone this month, fun!), but Chicago power-poppers Beach Bunny want you to feel like it’s the worst summer of your baby-adult life and you’re hitting the ice cream stand in Venice Beach for what was originally supposed to be a date, maybe getting a good bit of your vanilla soft-serve all over your face as you gaze blankly into the ocean because you forgot napkins. Then again, perhaps this summer-bummer pop serving is a timely release (they’re not an LA band, after all, so it’s not like everything has to be on script), as it dropped (intentionally?) on Valentine’s Day and could potentially fit the mood for you sad singles out there who spent the holiday sinking into the couch as you consumed cheap chocolate. That works too. Either way, Beach Bunny’s debut full-lenght, ironically dubbed Honeymoon, will hit that sweet tooth craving sugary melodies and songs of wistful heartbreak.

Forming in 2015, Beach Bunny has a genesis like many other projects by talented young songwriters these days, in the comfort of a bedroom, and perhaps in the discomfort of a broken heart, too. Lili Trifilio, a student at DePaul University at the time, solidified her project into a full-fledged rock band two years (and two EPs) later, and brought in the buzz with their 2018 EP, Prom Queen. Hitting all the right “sad-girl” notes, Trifilio’s songwriting on these early releases exhibited a sharp ear for pop melody that married the sweet and sunny with the melancholy, applying it to familiar post-Weezer power-pop dynamics. 

Soundwise, Honeymoon doesn’t stray too far from the pack. It’s simply an expanded version of what Trifilio has already established with her non-album releases. Opening with the breezy bubble-grunge of “Promises,” we find Trifilio wondering something we’ve all wondered before while in the depth of post-heartbreak: “When you’re all alone in your bedroom, do you ever think of me?” she sings in an honest alto that sounds a little bit like the singer she has perhaps drawn the most comparison to, Bethany Cosentino, while dipping ever so slightly into a subtle vibrato that sounds a little bit like a more subdued Marissa Paternoster. “Cuffing Season” follows faster punk dynamics. There’s a mindset that seems to define the romantic lives of the two generations that Trifilio straddles the line of, the self-embracing of introversion clashing with the desire for intimacy, a feeling she touches on here: “Maybe we are getting too close/Paranoid permanence is just an empty promise/Sometimes I like being on my own/I’m afraid of winding up alone.”

The highs of this brief album really hit in the middle. “April” brings in a janglier spin to Trifilio’s crying-fest. “I’m sick of counting tears, wishing you were here,” she sings over classically chipper Johnny Marr extract. It subsides with a noisy jam and is followed by the wonderful ballad “Rearview,” a quieter moment where the stripped back arrangement makes the heartbreak in Trifilio’s voice all the more noticable; there are moments you hear her voice shake, as if she’s about to cry (and kind of wants to). A quiet-to-loud outro a la grunge leads us into “Ms. California”. Trifilio dishes out all the envious angst a midwesterner might ideally have over someone from the Golden State, all through the use, ironically, of a chorus that should make any indie songwriter from Los Angeles green. It’s the kind of singalong chorus that hits all the sweet-spots for this melody-addicted reviewer, albeit couching a very common and tropey subject. Towards the second half of the album is a sprinkling of more diverse dynamics. “Colorblind” pulls a book from the Hop Along book of balancing an emo-punk flavour with a funky, almost danceable groove, and “Racetrack” keeps the mood of the music in pace with the mood of the lyrics, slowing things down and trading the four-piece rock band for a lone electric piano before the garage pop comes back twice more to close off the album.

This album is certainly nothing groundbreaking, nor even all that dynamic, but like Charly Bliss’s Guppy before it, it fulfills its promise of delivering a wonderful debut LP from an artist that had years ago announced their arrival through a string of online EPs and singles. It may lack variance specifically in lyrical subject matter, but it still speaks to very real feelings and insecurities. And as long as we have hearts for someone to break and pillows to cry in (and ice-cream to cry over), having those insecurities voiced back at us through a noisy wave of guitars and sun-kissed tunes will always be welcome.

7.1 (Stand-Out)

Release date: February 14, 2020

Label: Mom+Pop

Review: Never Not Together by Nada Surf

FFO: Superchunk, Teenage Fanclub, The Rentals

Compared to other 1990s one-hit wonders, Nada Surf’s career trajectory has been an interesting one. They came in big in the summer of 1996 with their Ric Ocasek-produced MTV hit “Popular,” an acerbic song with a big chorus that found the New York City trio (now a four-piece) raking in a good bit of money for their major-label, Elektra. The song’s success was ultimately at the expense of their sophomore album, 1998’s The Proximity Effect, which, despite having enough palatable Replacements-lite power-pop cuts in hindsight, did not contain a track that scratched Elektra’s itch for another college radio hit. The label’s nixing of the band opened the door for a few years of day jobs and, eventually, Barsuk Records, home to indie up-and-comers like Death Cab For Cutie and Rilo Kiley. Starting with 2002’s exceptional Let Go, things have been fairly consistent for the band. Their sound developed in a direction away from the caustic, feedback-drunk irony that was the calling-card of 1990s rock into sincere, lush, jangly pop music, a sound which they have more or less stuck with since.

In that regard, their latest album Never Not Together is not entirely different from anything they’ve released in the past 15 years; it is not a massive stylistic jump or sonic experiment, nor a defining opus from a band that has been at it for 25 years. Certain lyrical adjustments aside, it could have been released in the place of Let Go and fit in quite nicely in the milieu of 2002. Nada Surf’s gift has never laid in sonic excursions, but in tightening their craft as songwriters, performers of rich power-pop that matures with the band and their audience. Never Not Together triumphs in that area in spades, giving us an album that is somehow both their most compact and their most full-bodied collection of songs in a good while.

The opening track, and first single, “So Much Love,” fades in with pretty acoustic guitars and a sprinkle of piano; this sweet, delicate pop rock track is somewhat par for the course for Nada Surf at this point, and begins the album nicely with a safe air of familiarity before taking off with “Come Get Me,” a good dash of floaty jangle pop a la Jayhawks, interspersed with lines of moog synth that plays like something from Summerteeth-era Wilco. “Just Wait” finds its infectiousness in a more straightforward, hooky fashion, almost fitted perfectly for radio with its four-chord opening over swelling keyboard and strings. Despite being the most simple, straightforward track on the album, “Just Wait” also feels like the turning point on the album, as the tracks that fill the second half are filled with a wider variance in arrangement and style. “Something I Should Do” is an upbeat rocker that employs spoken word in a way that might be enough to hook those who are looking for another “Popular”; what’s missing is the caustic tone, as Matthew Caws says “And we have to hold onto that hippie point harder/Empathy is good, lack of empathy is bad,” going for the post-Elektra sincerity he has taken to. “Looking For You” opens with a children’s choir that seems to be singing about insomnia before working itself towards a fantastic build with the hopeful message that “what you’re looking for’s looking for you, too.”

The strongest moment on the album comes with “Mathilda”, a 6 minute track that is almost broken down in 3 different suites. “They used to call me Mathilda,” Caws sings over a simple folksy melody. “My mama kept my hair long. I was more pretty than handsome, and I was not very strong.” This exploration of self-hatred learned from societal standards forays from reverb-washed arpeggio to overdriven power chords before settling into a Paul Simonesque folk-pop outro movement. “There’s a special hell that we build for ourselves, and it’s handed down in homes and playgrounds,” he sings. Within most of the lyricism lies this desire to love others, a sort of humanistic vision of neighbourliness. Nada Surf have always taken a more direct approach to lyricism whether that be in the overt sarcasm of “Popular,” the vitriolic damnation of toxic masculinity in “Mothers Day,” or the wistful longing of “Inside Of Love.” Caws and company channel this more towards sharing wisdom, altruism and acceptance in these woefully, absurdly divisive times. People looking for more extended metaphors, witty wordplay or crypticism may want to wait for the next Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks album. Otherwise, the marriage of honesty and innocence is refreshing in its own way.

Seeing Nada Surf in concert these days, you’ll never see them wince when they play “Popular” the way Radiohead might when dusting off “Creep”. There is no desire from the band to divorce themselves from their novice work. But while other 90s one-hit wonders may also attempt to recreate their biggest hits, Nada Surf continues to strive to mature; not through sweeping experiments, but through small steps towards crafting perfect songs. Never Not Together has the feeling of meeting up with an old friend over coffee. There is always that familiarity that doesn’t preclude the growth from being noticed. And in a world that seems to get noisier as time goes on, that might be the kind of detoxing we’ve been looking for.

7.6 (Stand-Out)

Released: February 7, 2020

Label: Barsuk Records