Album Review: Surf City Kudos

Surf City. Photo / Supplied

Rating: 3/5
Verdict: The sound of 80s NZ rock today

Put Surf City's debut album on, turn it up, and you will be transported back to a dingy lounge in a dank flat, sometime during the late 80s and early 90s. It's the sound of loose and youthful noise, that's slightly uppity and gritty, yet shy and passionate all in one.

It has the incessant grind of Snapper, the catchy and determined jangle of The Clean, and the beautifully eerie noise and distortion of the Jesus and Mary Chain. And no, they're not from Dunedin. These guys formed in Mt Roskill in 2004 and have been making a racket ever since.

It's music from a past era, but Surf City make it their own by playing it powerfully, passionately, and, at times, with unabashed fury. If it wasn't for a dreary patch midway through, where it feels lifeless and sounds a little humdrum, Kudos would be a great album.

But it's odd that things give way to drollness on the smouldering Yakuza Park, because this is a band who are at their most thrilling and lively on tremulous eight-minute epic Icy Lakes. That track manages to sustain a scorching jangle and wall of sound intensity every second it takes to reveal itself.

It starts getting more steely and riveting towards the end, with the My Bloody Valentine seasickness of Autumn, and they whip it up for the light and lofty CIA before the echoey and thudding psychedelic stomp of Zombies to end.

-TimeOut