Beach Fossils Are a Unique Find

Beach Fossils

Pretty much everyone who knows me well knows by now my obsession with the new shoegaze movement (referred by some as nugaze, but I don't like that term).  Last year, I got into DIIV, who are the darlings of this scene (on tour now with Wild Nothing).  In my research, I found that Zachary Cole Smith, the frontman of DIIV, started out this scene in New York with a previous band called Beach Fossils back in 2009.  By the time Beach Fossils released their second album, "Clash the Truth", in 2013, Smith had already left the band for his own project, DIIV.

However, Beach Fossils, headed by Dustin Payseur, very much hold their own.  Yes, there are some similarities.  Both make smudgy music with strong rhythms, using one guitar to scratch out the beat and another to guitar to frolic with the melody., both have subdued vocals cached behind the smeared landscape of sound.  But Beach Fossils is less sopoforic, less impressionistic, and more clear, more concise.  They are like an up-tempo Joy Division, not droopy or mopey at all.  Another band they kind of remind me of from the '80s is the British group, Felt.

The title track, "Clash of Truth", with its melodic, Peter Hook-style bass melody. starts this collection, sounding a lot like Joy Division, maybe like early New Order.  "Generational Synthetic" continues this simple yet gratifying interplay between bass and guitar, sounding a lot like The Reivers, back when they were known as Zeitgeist.  "Sleep Apnea" is an aptly named little pleasantly drowsy tune.  "Careless" is my favorite track on the album with a jolting beat and lilting guitar hook.  You can dance to it.  There are a couple of ambient, fuzzy outros here, like "Modern Holiday" and "Brighter" that just add to the atmosphere.  And there are a few eye-poppers on here like "In Vertigo", "Caustic Cross", and "Crashed Out", another one of my favorite tracks.

All in all, this is a really good album.  Beach Fossils is definitely one of the bands at the front of this genre.  It is solid '60s jangle pop coalescing with '80s mood music to create something uniquely modern.  About the only complaint that I have is that all of the songs are slightly homogeneous, sounding the same.  For instance, I had a hard picking one or two songs to add to my infamous mix CDs.  Nothing was standing out enough.  "Careless" would definitely make it on a mix.  In other words, this album is much easier to listen to as a whole than singling out one or two favorite songs.

It's about time for this band to grace us with a third album.  They are out on tour this summer.  But when they hit the studio to make some more dreamy music, I will be listening.