Beach Fossils
Madame Jojo’s, London
27/10/2010

At a 4th of July party in Long Island this year, Beach Fossils’ John Pena threw a bass guitar into a river and emerged, for 5 minutes, as the new bad boy of guitar pop. Bloggers reported it as a ‘minor scandal’ and made fun of his shorts like tabloid gossips.

It was what the band needed. For all the beautiful songs that have been written by the twentysomethings returning to the dreamworld of Cocteau Twins, Brian Eno and slacker-rock there hasn’t been much else to get excited about. Dustin Payseur, the band’s songwriter, has been interviewed countless times about the “detached, solitary recordings” and, you can almost hear him yawning, “oversaturation of lo-fi guitar bands”. But despite leaving it to Happy Birthday to act like the boys and girls who were born to be kissing behind bike sheds, the four piece continue to knock back that wussy-boy image tonight. They don’t over-reverb the vocals, giving tracks like ‘Youth’ a punchy finish rather than nostalgic (but equally effective) sappiness and ‘Daydream’, the song that started it all, finds new feet as it speeds up while retaining the original’s liquid-dipped coolness. It’s reserved at first but like Vampire Weekend before they could afford the fancy shirts Beach Fossils show they’ve got some real swag tonight. With so many new artists preferring to hide behind rubbish photographs it’s refreshing to see them bop around the stage, flinging their messy hair and spindly legs. On ‘Golden Age’, Payseur even manages to crack a smile as he hits the big “ohh ohhh ohhhs”.

As they come to a crashing finish, hitting the final two album tracks on the run, they look like a band who are having a “moment”.  We know that in 2010 it’s cool to be a nerd, but phew! Beach Fossils have finally realised it can be fun too.

Sian Rowe