Beach Fossils - Self-titled

Beach Fossils
Beach Fossils
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Beach Fossils’ self-titled debut technically ticks all the right boxes. Recorded last year by South Carolina’s Dustin Payseur from the comfort of his new Brooklyn bedroom, it’s an immaculately-assembled and disciplined collection of low-fi pop – drenched with the kind of day-glo nostalgia that’s going down so well at the moment.


The album’s strength is the unaffected simplicity of Payseur’s song-writing, which beguiles with a combination of deceptively uncomplicated riffs and naïve lyrics, evoking a craving for uncontained spaces and sunny afternoons wiled away in undisturbed indolence. It’s quite similar in this sense to label-mates Best Coast: but where Bethany Cosentino’s songs are endearing in their unadorned candour, Payseur’s have a tendency to wallow in a maudlin yearning for escape.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that; but after a while a sense of uniformity begins to set in, the emotions evoked on a song like ‘Lazy Day’ (remembering a day spent lolling around outside) being strikingly similar to those suggested by ‘Vacation’ (skipping town to a place where “the trees and sky collide”) or ‘Golden Age’ (“everything’s blue from the top of the sky to underneath you”).

The lyrical consistency isn’t helped by the interchangeable feel of the music – Payseur’s reliance on the loop pedal to develop songs dooms them to becoming rigorous little exercises in knitted guitars. Not even his attractively reverb-saturated vocals prevent them from becoming dully repetitive.

While Beach Fossils is a good-enough listen, the album’s wistful charms are quickly forgotten after a few spins.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 371, July 19th 2010