Frankie and the Pool Boys' first record was kind of a kitchen-sink record, with Ferenc Dobronyi on guitar, Jeff Turner on bass, Dusty Watson on drums, and a bunch of friends on the other guitars and additional whatever. Then they became a real band with an established lineup for two great LPs. And now we've got back to the start with Endless Drummer, a Poolboys record with a different drummer on every track, not to mention a bunch of other friends joining in.
And this makes sense. A playfulness is at the center of Frankie and the Poolboys and I think Ferenc was the sort of kid that enjoyed his toys more when you use them how you're not supposed to. So Endless Drummer isn't a record about tight control to make as perfect a surf record as can be, it's about new twists and turns and fresh energy, which they pretty much guarantee with his rotating lineup.
That lineup includes members of Slacktone, Surfer Joe, Bradipos 4, Greasy Gills, Pollo Del Mar, Surf Coasters, Los Venturas, The Mermen, Drfiting Sand, The TomorrowMen, Tikiyaki Orchestra, the Deadbeats, and it feels redundant to mention their normal drummer Eric Ruel but he is one of the drummers so I don't want to leave him out! Surprisingly, this is not a zoom collab or anything like that: it's almost entirely just people that dropped by Ferenc's home recording studio. So in a way, it's an album about friendship! They even tossed in a few other friends on bass from the likes of The Bomboras, Greasy Gills, Strings Aflame and Jonpaul Balak's on there too.
It's hard to sum up this album because it's not only switching drummers but switching up the overall style of songs. There are of course some vibrant adventure tracks, but there's also forays into dub, exotica, psychedelia, and a vocal garage rock track. If you handed me a burned CD and told me "it's a Ferenc Dobronyi joint", as I'm sure he dubs all of his ventures, I'd have a hard time telling you if this was Pollo, Poolboy, Tomorrowmen... could probably cross off Mach IV. And that's fine!
There's a lot of people involved here, but in a way the hero is the recording studio. It's not just a place for all these people to inhabit, it made a great sounding record, clearly engineered to let you hear those guest drummers but with enough room to let the guitar do its thing. Listen to it on your good setup! I enjoyed it on my out-of-the-house headphones (ask me about my Tozo Openreals, a stay-at-home dad's best friend), stood out more played loud on my car stereo, but I felt I needed to listen to it all over again on my fancy speakers.
And quick shout-out to the album cover. Much like the music itself, it needs to be nice and big to be fully appreciated, but it's beautiful and very atypical for surf music. It made me think of Sandy Nelson (and the one-sheet provided with my review confirms it!). And while my copy was digital and I don't usually get too wowed by colored vinyl, I'm impressed at how much the marbled maroon matches the album cover.
You can grab vinyl, digital or CD through bandcamp
