With summer coming about, it seems quite appropriate and expected that people start listening to more music oriented to the season. The season of summer and it’s transitional period better- known as spring- bring with it a loss of attire fit for the colder times of year. Once sweaters and coats are shoved aside in a closet, then you have a refitting of apparel that is  more loose, colorful, revealing… What we like to address in the business as “sexy” or “haught.”

Spring equals the sexy-season and it’s the immediate and extreme response to six months of oppressive cold weather. Summer follows but at this point we’ve mellowed out from the excitement of it finally being warm. It’s hot, so we just want to take it easy, have fun, and stay cool. Trips are made to the beach to sunbathe, boat, para sail, play volleyball or… Surf

Sandy City and their first album release, Surfin’ WA, is quite representative of summertime and it’s water oriented activities. Yes! There are songs that have to do with surfing but for the most part there’s an overtone of the positive aspects of being incredibly lazy. “Wasting Our Time” seems to be the song that more heavily sets that tone. Dealing with such pertinent issues as eating ice cream and doing anything else that may occupy your time on what seems to be a day without any particular schedule.

The opening song of the album gets straight to the point of setting the them that this is a surf-rock band. It’s called Deathwave and it’s about a… Well, deathwave. You know, the kind of waves that are so fantastically thrilling and massive in size that give surf junkies the thrill they crave. That thrill of “This is awesome and it might kill me.” Much the same thrill a heroin addict may have for his or her choice drug. This entire Sandy City recored gives you the same feel that a Beach Boys record would in relation to what you get when you add fun and summer together if fun was not already implied with the word summer. It’s a sort of homage to the Beach Boys in the way that they would describe events or normal things people would do on the beach in the summer. Cars, girls, hanging out, being cool… Girls. Except instead of straight up sounding like the Beach Boys like a cover band might, Sandy City makes it punk-as-fuck and kick out more of a goofy element like “Sitting on the dock of the bay, sitting on the dock and it’s okay. Sitting on the dock of the bay. Sitting in the dock in the middle of the day!”

The overall album is fun whilst being incredibly well done in production. What could either be intentional or accidental are the lo-fi sounds that come from each song while also have that lo-fi recording sound that you would get from a half-broken 1970’s tape recorder that one would have used to record interrogations. You can find those in thrift stores for five dollars or something. That entire lo-fi effect is what one should get from this album especially if you’ll be listening to it on the beach in the summertime. It’s going to be coming out of a cheap-shitty boom with you on the beach (getting sand in it) and you’ll be playing it loud because you love it. It wouldn’t make sense to listen to something recorded in hi-fi since it’s going to be coming through poor thrift-style speakers anyway. This cheap boom box you have isn’t going to make Sandy City’s Surfin’ WA sound poor, it’ll make it sound fucking-fantastic

The album is out on Fox Pop Recordings and can be purchased online. A rumored 12″ may also be on it’s way.

Wasting Our Time

Meeper Sleeper

Sandy City Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/sandycitywa

Fox Pop Recordings: http://www.the-collective.net/~foxpop/