Sometimes being part of a local scene can raise your profile a bit, make sure the right people hear your stuff. I. Jeziak and the Surfers are, to my knowledge, the only Polish surf band at the moment, and yet they've managed to break out all the same, getting signed to the prestigious Hi-Tide label, and taking stage at Surfer Joe Summer Festival, and after this record, who knows? I suppose in surf music you can make a name for yourself by scraping for that one spot of originality nobody's found yet, or you can grab that ring that so many have reached for and slipped their fingers: vintage authenticity. Somehow this group from a place that probably doesn't have easy access to Fender gear and more than likely grew up hearing Shadows more than Surfaris have made about as convincing of a 60's reproduction as I've heard.
Inevitably an authentic 60's sound comes down to recording, which is not strictly lo-fi but but nails some of the subtle recording qualities of vintage surf. I'm not a recording engineer, I can't tell you what they are, I just know it when I hears it. Impressively, I see no credits with respect to engineering aside from mastering (not to discount mastering, it's why I didn't used to like some 60's surf bands because I heard them on CD before vinyl), so I'm left to assume that they handled it themselves. Hats off, though I gotta say: surprised they opted for some hard-panned stereo!
But of course that attention to detail matters most in songwriting, which keeps things retro-simple with short, repeated phrases and riffs. That said, they're also working with the modern knowledge of the 60's surf canon, so they have a wide bag of tricks to pull from to keep things fresh. Overblown sax, keys, plenty of glissandos, and most importantly knowledge of how to use surf sounds in ways that don't sound perfunctory. Take "Surfer's Stomp", which even in name wants to be the sort of surf burner that we all expect on a record, but adds an extra thrill with how the keys and guitars align to swell up. As much as they expertly replicate vintage timbre, they do have their own sound, and I'd say the most consistently noticeable thing about them is their quiet loudness. If this were a 60's group and somebody put them on a compilation, you'd more likely find them on the Surfer's Mood series than Strummin' Mental. I think about The Chantays a lot here, and certainly a big part of that is the muted keyboard bits, but the energy in general.
That said, they branch out a bit on Side B, with "Arabesque" flying off in ways where you never quite know what the next note might be. And are those strings? It still sounds vintage enough (surf bands experimented!), and it's probably my favorite track. Then immediately afterwards "Detective" skips along with a totally different drumbeat, and "Unity with Nature" tosses the drums out alltogether for a meditative moment.
Eighteen tracks is a lot to work with, enought that each listen reveals something you might have glossed over before. If you're one of those guys that can't be bothered with anything past the 60's... maybe make an exception just this one time. Hopefully they're not too authentic to vintage surf and stick around for a long time without transitioning to 70's music.
Available on Bandcamp and Vinyl. While the vinyl isn't anything special in terms of liner notes, extra goodies or anything, this still strikes me as a band that just makes sense that way, and it sounds great too.
And by the way, their vintage obsession extends to their video production. Love the way they did these, plus they actually pronounce the name in this video. "Yeh-ZHACK"
