My job is not always the most inspiring one. I hope and trust that my immediate superiors are not reading this. I doubt it somehow. However, one of the more rewarding sidelines of my work is that I can, (as I go about my admin and lesson planning), stick my headphones on while I'm at my desk, browse Spotify and listen to something I've never heard before, be inspired and get taken somewhere.
Like yesterday for example. When I chanced upon this five year old debut album by a Brooklyn outfit called Beach Fossils called, appropriately, Beach Fossils. The record is built upon a very solid and rarely changing template. New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies and more particularly its opening song Age of Consent, (one of the best things that band ever did), and the moment in the song when Barney starts intoning, 'Lost you, I've lost you, I've lost you, I've lost you, I've lost you..' The inspiration and essence of this album is captured in those few seconds. At least that's my take on things.
There's nothing anything like as emotionally wrought as that lyrically on here. Nothing seems to happen particularly in Beach Fossils world except for trips to the beach, (appropriately, given their name),wonderment of the enormity of the universe, vague, barely spoken, longing for the opposite sex and such like. Nothing wrong with that of course. They're generally pretty happy campers at this point in their development as musicians, certainly by comparison with New Order for example. Their stuff is very similar in nature, on the surface at least, to that of Real Estate, Wild Nothing, Ducktails and countless others who sprang from the same parts of the world and the indie guitar scene that sprouted there in the past ten years. The reference points it draws on are strangely very English, very indie and very eighties. Aside from New Order I'd list The Wake, Felt, The Railway Children and other shy and earnest fringed guitar strummers. So odd that this stuff is so popular among hip American musicians nowadays. As I said Beach Fossils very rarely, if ever, stray from the formula they've chosen and it all serves to make the album an ever more effective debut record, Frankly it's a minor classic.
It doesn't really matter that the band aren't particularly singing about anything apart from the joy of being alive, being young and in a band. They distill their musical influences highly effectively into a ringing, happy, contemplative whole that ends at the beginning and closure of last track Gathering with the crying of gulls and lapping of waves. It's a contented and confident album. I'll give the band's other records a listen in the next few days but I'm not sure they could possibly beat this. Hear it, if you haven't already!
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