Good Thursday to you, fine folks of surf.
Clearly the 2025 Gremmy Awards have not yet begun, but I've got two categories about 90% written so maybe they should have by now. I'm thinking within a week they'll start and hopefully continue steadily from there.
Not much else to report on this end! A quick reminder to sign up for my mailing list for when they do start! And if you have something that you think deserves mentioning in here, please let me know.
New Releases
Amphibian Man - Metal Goes Surf Vol. 2
I kind of felt like Amphibian Man's metamorphosis was settling into a final form, so it's fun to see a throwback to a previous project. As the title suggests, this is the second release of surf covers of metal songs. Amphibian Man's sound is pretty heavy, and feels uniquely suited to it more than many surf bands. I gotta say though, metal is not my strong suit. If it's not a Sabbath or Maiden song, chances are low that I'm going to recognize it, and since all the titles have been parodied into surf, I have no idea what songs have been covered. I bet it would be fun to figure it out! I find this pretty enjoyable even as "original" songs to my ear.
If you're thinking Tikiyaki Orchestra, scale it back. If you're thiking Tikiyaki 5-O, scale it back. These are five familiar tracks with two guitars, usually bongos, some ambient waves/crickets/etc, and a slow tempo. It's probably not going to knock your socks off, but the 1 euro price of entry asks you to not think about it, or anything, too hard.
Monster Wave - Return of Monster Wave
I have to admit, my brain can only handle so many black-and-white album covers of EPs named _____ of Monster Wave. But in any case, here's a nice 4-song EP from this Asheville-based group. They always seem to head in an unexpected direction, with this taking some jazzier moments, some surprisingly spacey synths, and some shreddin' guitar.
Ronald Reagan? The Actor? - Breach the Cryalis
There are some ridiculous names in surf music, and this is up there. This band has had a few EPs in the past few years, but this is the first full-length. It's weird, psychedelic, a little jammy, a little jazzy, perhaps not even surf enough to qualify for some people, but they've reached out to me about their previous releases so I thought I'd throw them a bone and mention it here. To be honest, I'll need some more time to digest it.
SURF NEWS
Surfguitar101 Festival Lineup announced
Jeff read the details at Winter Surf Festival and has since made them public. It's actually going back to a previous venue from before my first SG101: the Elks Lodge in Garden Grove, CA, July 31st to August 2nd.
The lineup is...
LOS STRAITJACKETS w/ Danny Amis
(aka Daddy O Grande)
THE BOMBORAS (New lineup with Evan and Erik Foster)
THE BOSS MARTIANS
EDDIE ANGEL’S GUITAR PARTY
POLLO DEL MAR
DRACULINA
PRE-SURF DANCE PARTY w/ MATT QUILTER
JON & THE NIGHTRIDERS (TRIBUTE)
SLACKTONE (ALSO DOING SEMINARS ON THEIR RESPECTIVE INSTRUMENTS)
TIKIYAKI 5-0
SHORTY’S SWINGIN’ COCONUTS
LITTLE KAHUNA
HILO HI-FLYERS
THE VALIANTS
SPF 1985
THE SEISMICS
THE BREAKERS
THE TRABANTS
DEATH VALLEY (REUNION)
THE THUNDERCHIEFS (REUNION)
Given troubles with traveling groups worrying about immigration under Trump at last year's festival, it's no surprise to see an all-American lineup, but it's hard to complain about many of THE biggest surf bands still doing it (and a few that had stopped!). Personally I've never seen Los Straitjackets, so that's a big one for me. I'll add that while Jeff has given zero indication of this happening this year to me, I feel like they always squeeze a few in past the initial announcement.
Minor AI Stuff
Just in case you were interested, I reported an AI only account yesterday and Bandcamp removed it. It wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped, there wasn't a dedicated menu item for it when you report, but they removed it in 24 hours. I chose a pretty obvious target (they basically said they used Suno in one of the descriptions), and they weren't surf but they were a band that was clogging up the surf tag results on bandcamp. Admittedly I was testing the waters and I might get a little more active after a succesful result...
Qobuz, my second go-to for things that aren't on bandcamp, released a statement about AI music. I think it's a little sneaky, very sympathetic to the anti-AI sentiment, listing the problems, saying they're "human first" and that they'll act on "fraudulent" uploads, but they don't really have any stance here on "original" AI content. My big article about AI featured Qobuz a lot, but I don't want to paint them as a bad guy -- they were just the platform laid out in a way that helped me track it best, they weren't any worse than the other non-bandcamp platforms. I didn't love this one.
Not Surf
I quite enjoyed this album today.
Papir - IX
Krautrock/Post-rock with a nice warm glow to it and not a whole lot of urgency to go anywhere. The guitar and bass remind me a lot of Maserati's Language of Cities, which was a formative post-rock record for me in my teens.
Surf Revisit
Y'all, I've been so deep in Gremmys that I really feel like I have nothing in this category this week. Rather than force something, I'm just going to save it for next week.
Meaningless Poll
Last week's Link Wray vs Dick Dale poll ended in a dead heat of 1 to 1, though it listed 6 participants, so I wonder if maybe something is wrong. I might try to find a different polling platform soon. But in advance of the first Gremmy category, let's do an open-ended one! This is of all time, not the past year:
What's your favorite surf album art?
^^^ that "support us" link is for poll.ly, not Storm Surge of Reverb. If you want to support me, go here
