Storm Surge of Reverb

It's been, oh, 60 years since the surfquake and music has changed significantly. Everybody reading this website recognizes that there was something special in surf music, but it can also be crossbred to make new amazing sounds. You don't have to be trying to forge something new, sometimes you're just making the music that makes sense to you. No matter the case, here are the standouts in modernized surf music this year.

This is the category highlighting bands that are most mostly influenced directly by bands from the 1960s and would delight in hearing themselves compared in such a way. There are years where there aren't as many bands in this category as I'd hope, and I get a little more forgiving about what "traditional" sounds like. This year there were so many great trad surf records that I went in the opposite direction, dumping great records into other categories at the slightest hint of modernity and cutting records I like because the bar was simply too high. Certainly not the worst problem to have, but often tough in its own way. Ideally the Honorable Mentions are good enough that somebody else will think they should be the winner. I expect to see a lot of that this year, as there are some true heavyweights below.