Storm Surge of Reverb is currently just one person and I have my own fickle tastes. There are lots of albums that I know others enjoy but didn't click with me, and there are albums I enjoyed but not quite enough to find their way into the Gremmys. So I call on my friends to spread it out a bit! The following people are very well-versed in today's instro music and I want to thank them for letting me put that to use.

"Best" Concept Album

CHURCH SURF - CHURCH SURF

If not here then where? This is for the bands that are close enough to surf but hard to consider amongst the rest. The weirdos. The criteria here is especially loose, basically up to my own whims, but I think they all have value to surf music as a whole.

Rad is a dumb term I use to describe more loud, aggro, punk influenced surf. I chose it because it rhymes with trad.

Instro music today is a wonderful thing. Whereas the big surge of surf music rode a wave of retro novelty, this music now sits comfortably in obscurity with its creators playing for themselves and their peers, free to let creativity take them wherever it may. Many new surf bands are moored much closer to modern surf groups than vintage, and that's a great thing. We're building, spreading, getting weirder and more interesting with each year.

Trad surf bands will happily fly the banner of being a surf band. Their albums are typically a simple selection of good, upbeat songs and are happy with that humble scope. It's not 100% cut-and-dry, and I'm bending my own rules on a few bands here, but these are records that make me happy to be a surf nut. And a side note: I'm including bands that might not strive for a California 60's sound but are otherwise retro-mimicking.

Surf has always had strong visual iconography attached to nudge how we interpret these instrumentals. We've built and expanded upon that just as we've transformed the music over the years. Here are some of the records where the art really stood out to me this year.

These lists are never definitive, I always miss a few but there's a lot! More than last year!

If something is bolded it means it was reviewed on this site. I'm only including releases that are over 50% instrumental. Big thanks to Kevin Kamphaus and Nestor Burma for helping me fill in some gaps.

EPs

My definition of EP is between 2 and 7 songs. Some 7-song records might be classified as an LP if there are longer tracks. I did not track singles (as in one track releases) because it starts getting out of control.

The Gremmy Awards are Storm Surge of Reverb's yearly awards recognizing some of the most oustanding surf and instro albums of the year. Keep in mind that Storm Surge of Reverb is really just one person, and so for the most part these are just the tastes of one idiot. That idiot has listened to an awful lot of this music, but certainly not all of it. I try to balance it out a little bit by contacting a few people that I know are big surf superfans and whose opinions I respect and having them write Guest Gremmys. Also, these awards are really supposed to be the cream of the crop.

There aren't too many people doing awards for surf music which makes me very self-conscious about my choices. The Gremmys are just my opinions and some albums that didn't make an impact for me meant a lot to others, not to mention ones that I loved but just didn't make it to the top tier. So here are some other voices from people that I know are listening to a lot of surf and whose opinions I respect, and hopefully they'll cover some of the ground that I didn't.