Back in 2010, Floridian four piece Surfer Blood released their debut album Astro Coast, one of the most promising albums of recent years. It also established the band as one of the more promising guitar bands to come from across the pond since The Strokes exploded out of NYC with Is This It just after the turn of the millennium. It was an assured record saturated with self-confidence and a deep musical understanding.
As is the same with any artist who has a hit debut, the pressure was on to deliver with their sophomore album. Apparently though for Surfer Blood, this inevitable pressure wasn’t enough, and they decided to sign and release the record through a major label. The result was Pythons, which was released on 10th June through Warner Bros Records. Sadly, the album does not fully live up to the promise that their debut suggested but that isn’t to say that it isn’t a bloody decent record.
In March of last year, the future of the band was cast into uncertainty when frontman John Paul Pitts was arrested for domestic battery, a charge which was later dropped. Thankfully they pulled through but the tumultuous experience clearly made an impression upon Pitts, with many of the autobiographical lyrics on Pythons seemingly arising from said episode, I Was Wrong being a prime example. Pythons is a record of contradictory qualities; the breezy, summery ‘beach rock’ melodies are juxtaposed with Pitts discomforting lyrics. Even then these uneasy lyrics are sung in a vocal style that exudes carelessness and pleasure with every uttered syllable. In places, such as opener Demon Dance this contradiction is pulled off without a hitch. In other places, the listener is left wanting, with some tracks taking on somewhat of a cliché slant.
Surfer Blood seem to abandon the East Coast they call home in favour of West coast melodies from the far reaches of California. We’re not talking Beach Boys-esque harmonies here, but rather the more suburban Cali styling of the earlier and superior Weezer albums. I tried not to mention Weezer in this review as to avoid it becoming like every other Surfer Blood article written, but the similarities are just too stark to avoid. Not to say Pythons is a rip off of The Blue Album, but its influences are too clearly evident to ignore. This isn’t helped by the fact that Pitt could probably swap roles with Rivers Cuomo and no one would be any the wiser. The easiest (and laziest) way to sum up Pythons would be to label it as the best Weezer record since their 2001 eponymous effort, more commonly referred to as The Green Album.
But that would be doing the album no justice. It deserves more than that. It is a brutally honest effort from a band that is developing with every release. Whilst Pythons never quite reaches the soaring heights that Astro Coast managed with tracks like the band’s debut single Swim it seems to be a more consistent record. As well as that, it is a truly refreshing album if you can get past the downhearted lyricism. British summers are more often than not disappointingly frigid, but in Surfer Blood we may well have found the antidote. They are the metaphorical break in the clouds that we are always hoping for.
By Conor Giles
@_ConorGiles
