And in truth, Snowdonia probably isn't a flashy enough album to re-spark significant interest in the band anyway. One tactful album can’t buy a musician forgiveness any more than it can erase the pain of losing a loved one. So does Snowdonia mark a redemption for a once toxic band? As with all issues surrounding the art/artist divide, it’s not so clear cut. He responds not by cursing the cruel hand, but constructively, with an appreciation for the woman who always looked out for him and his sister: “I know you swam upstream for most of your life, dodging the grizzlies.” He’s never sounded closer to the songwriter we were promised on Astro Coast. A similarly sweet pragmatism carries through closer “Carrier Pigeon,” a heartbreaker he wrote after his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. Instead of making a big display of their bereavement, they pay tribute to their friend with some sounds he always enjoyed. It’s a nifty trick that the song that most directly touches on Fekete’s death is also the album’s most mirthful: “Six Flags in F or G” builds from a “Rock Lobster” tempo to a confetti burst of Mamas and the Papas-style sunshine pop before signing off with some Wowee Zowee guitar scribbles. With its paisley guitars and Sunday drive tempos, many listeners would be hard pressed to even locate the grief on first listen. Given the circumstances, Snowdonia is a surprisingly light album.
SURFER BLOOD FULL
“Thought I had a corroded heart/Oxidizing, torn apart/Now you’re starting it up yet again,” he sings, brimming with hope on the Inverted World-esque “Dino Jay.” And rather than reaching for that bowl of sour grapes again, “Matter of Time” opens the album with an assurance that Pitts’ aim is true this time: “In a world so full of murky intentions, we’ll make ourselves a home.” He’s really trying to make the best of things, he insists. He sounds about 90 anger management sessions removed from that guy, and the lyrics are peppered with promises that he’s a changed man. This is not the same Pitts who blasted through walls, sledgehammers swinging, on “ Swim,” nor is he the same bitter soul who played the victim so passive-aggressively on Pythons. It’s their calmest record, a relaxed, sunny outing pitched at the same volume as The Feelies’ casual late ’80s LPs. With a shuffled lineup that includes new guitarist Michael McCleary and bassist Lindsey Mills, whose harmony vocals lend welcome warmth to the record, he recasts Surfer Blood as the kinder, gentler guitar-pop band they might have been better off trying to be a couple album cycles ago. Instead, Pitts uses the terrible circumstances as a chance for reinvention. There’s no trace of opportunism on Snowdonia-no bitterness, no self-pity, no overstatement of grief. Snowdonia may be the closest Surfer Blood gets to a second chance, and it poses a test for Pitts: Can he really be the kind of frontman that listeners empathize with, and maybe even care for, again? Even the fans who jumped off the band’s surf board long ago, however, had to feel for the group last year when they lost guitarist Thomas Fekete to stomach cancer.
Their 2013 album Pythons opened with him eating literal sour grapes and only got nastier from there listeners understandably steered clear of it. After frontman John Paul Pitts’ 2012 arrest for domestic battery instantly transformed the band from potential indie-rock mainstays into permanently damaged goods, he at times seemed to carry on the group out of sheer spite. It does not store any personal data.Surfer Blood’s fourth album Snowdonia arrives with something the band hasn’t experienced in a long time: good will. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
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