This review can also be seen in the latest issue of The Technician.
Favorite Tracks: “Wake”, “Hideout”, “Too Far Gone”, “Translucent”, “Over”
Remember when you held your breath in a swimming pool long enough to become weightless and float to the surface? Triptides’ latest release brings back that feeling above the water.
The surf psychedelic pop band Triptides released their new LP Azur on French indie label RPUT, with a sound that fits an evening on the Riviera as much as a stroll on the boardwalk. The album opens with the single “Wake”, the jumping into the pool where the mood is hazy and youthful. The bittersweet twinge of the reverbed guitars pull you closer into the deep end on “Dark Side”. These pangs stay with you during the course of the album and develop into a hankering for ice cream on a blistering summer day. Vocalist Glenn Brigman provides the sweet, sugary, cavity-causing melodies from a summer long ago; nostalgic and distant, like the bottom of a swimming pool. The shimmery sounds apparent in the slower songs “Too Far Gone” and “Over” are much like the refraction of light into water. The four-piece from Bloomington, Indiana know their sound and the scene that come with it, which is why they have relocated to LA.
The album cover drum up images of swim caps and the modest bathing suits of the midcentury. In a way, this album and band have continually drawn attention to the end of this fashion, and the end of summer-obsessed culture. The 50s and 60s are long gone with the surf pop greats of the day; the Beach Boys, Dick Dale, Jan & Dean, and countless others who are no longer the unique prize of American culture. But Triptides does their finest to echo the days of muscle cars and the open coastline. The appropriately named closing track “Over” leaves the listener with the somber sting of the past, like chlorine in your eyes from the neighbor’s swimming pool.
– Jake Davis, WKNC Operations Manager