This is a band that’s straight-ahead with their delivery, so I’ll do the same: El Zeb nail it.
There’s no special sauce to El Zeb -- in terms of pure sound they could be mistaken for any of thousands of surf groups. They don’t need it because they have the personnel: Sebastien Fevry of Los Venturas, Sam Bolle probably best known as Dick Dale’s touring bassist, and Dusty Watson whose drumming resume includes so much surf & garage royalty that we’ll just settle and call him the most prominent name in surf drumming today.
If you’re in a rut and you feel like a lot of surf all sounds the same, this is the band to remind you that there’s something wonderful about refinement rather than reinvention. Side A has “Lane Splitter” an adrenaline-fueled speeder, and then “Pounding Surf” (my favorite) which rolls and tumbles with thunderous magnitude.
One notable thing about this is Sebastian’s style: Los Venturas is typically pretty flowery and soulful and the closest he gets to that is “Road to San Felipe” which is still a bit more straight-ahead surf than his normal band. Then he’s back at a straight surf sound with “Dad’s 65” -- the guitar lines on this record are so consistently on-point that it really speaks to his versatility.
This is only a 7” and it’s remarkably hard to get for a such a high-profile team (at least in surf terms). The best way to get it is to email them directly, but it’s well worth doing so. I really hope this isn’t a one-off.
