Dick Dale used to boast about how he was the father of heavy metal. However you may feel about that, it is the first type of music I can think of that really focused on aggression. That's a seed that germinated through subsequent loud musics that refactored back into surf. And here we are, recognizing instro music that wants to be fast, loud, and hit hard. These are groups that may not be trying to emotionally move you, but hopefully can set you in motion physically.

It's great to make music that sounds like the 60's, but sometimes you just want to make the surf music you want to make. Or maybe you want to push the genre beyond where it's been. There were a lot of great options here this year, and while I don't think my selections paint the full picture, these are the records that I felt were the best from start to finish.

Surf music has come a long way, but it didn't need to! Some groups are ready to go with a reverb tank and a Sentinals record. This category is for bands that are trying to recapture the magic rather than develop it.

Andre Nucci used to play in Intoxicos, but their relationship can't be that toxic because he illustrated this cover! I love when somebody can take something done a million times (in this case surfing guitarist) and make it feel new. The garbage, creature's eye, two nuclear bombs, that stuff is fun. But I also just love way it's illustrated. That guitar-surfer's stance and the linework on it really sells the motion. And I love the bright colors that fade to pastels with perspective. This band's art has always been good (the extended art from End Times seen on their facebook banner is great) but this is their best yet.

I think album art is important. It warms you up to a record and sets the tone. When sitting next to a bunch of other records, it's what makes somebody stop and ask "what is this?"

The Gremmy Awards are my choices for favorite surf records of 2023 stretched out into several categories in order give myself more work than anybody asked for. I have not heard every surf album released this year, but I sure did try, and even made a big list of as many as I could. That said, my taste is not infallible -- some records take multiple listens to sink in, and some things resonate with different people. However, my goal is to make a great list of surf instrumental records that I could recommend without hesitation to anyone. Not just good surf records -- there's a lot of those!

Odds and ends, things that I feel need to be recognized to sum up the year. Some categories return year-on-year, some don't.

This is a category for hybrid organisms with surf in their DNA but plenty of other things too. That can be plenty of things of course, so the definition is pretty subject to my own whims. That said, I really like this batch this year. These were all great releases and though their share very little with each other, I hope you can appreciate them all.

The Gremmys are a stupidly complicated thing, slicing up surf music into imaginary categories just so that I can make sense of things in my head. It's messy -- there are things in this category that could be in another category and vice versa. But the judging criteria of this one is delightfully simple:

Does it rip? How much?

This is a category for surf/instrumentals that aim to get your adrenaline spiking, maybe inspire some headbanging or fistpumping. I call it "rad" because it needs a name and it rhymes with trad. Let's go.

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.