Review: Beach Fossils - Clash the Truth

Sunny days, cold drinks and a pair of wayfarers could be a list of things that come to mind when Brooklyn indie rockers Beach Fossils pop up. Tunes soaked in reverb, with shimmering guitars jangling to a fixed, mostly floor-tom driven beat and deadpan, lifeless vocals may be Beach Fossils strongest and most recognizable characteristics and could be what brought them to where they are today. With an album and a single EP under their belts, Beach Fossils comes back in 2013 with a new album that isn't quite what you would expect from a band who has made a countless number of melancholic jams, such as "Lazy Day" and "What a Pleasure". Their latest effort, entitled Clash the Truth, is everything but lazy.

It's first and title track, maybe even the album's weakest due to it's bored, sloppy thrown together group vocal verse repetition, tells us only that yes; Beach Fossils is back with their jangly guitars and pounding, low-key drums, and what a better way to come back than with noticeably improved production and song variation! Sure, almost every track on Clash the Truth still seems to end on the Beach Fossils classic sour note, leaving the listener with suspense, begging for more. This trick may not work as many times as they'd hoped here. Undoubtedly the most vast improvement of this album is that Beach Fossils finally sound like they enjoy the music they're playing, which was a major issue prior. Tracks such as single, "Careless" and newly and thankfully remastered "Shallow" we hear Beach Fossils drummer, whose name cannot be pinned down in this review, in fear that they may find a new, 13th drummer, to add in the rotation, hitting those cymbals; finally, and hard. With vocals being louder in the mix and a more optimistic sound overall, it will translate impeccably well and the sound of the new record I imagine will create an entirely new live experience for the band, for the better.

One might like to relate the title of the album to the reinvention of their sound, much like with Cloud Nothing's 2012 album Attack On Memory: Beach Fossils remind you to Clash with whatever "truth" you knew prior and find yourself a nice new opinion on them, whether it good or bad. But with a sound like this, how can you hate?

7/10