Ah, the sophomore album—so many expectations riding on the success of your first album. So many voices clamoring about what your sound should be and where it should go. So many inimical hands waiting to tear you apart at the first symptoms of the dreaded ‘slump’. I hate to be a part of this latter camp of course, but I cannot help that prickly feeling like I would have enjoyed Brooklyn band Beach Fossils’ second album more if I had not already heard the first one; however, Clash the Truth still possesses plenty of merits to be found.
Formed out of a solo project by Dustin Payseur, Beach Fossils moved out of the bedroom and into the studio for this sophomore effort; the result is the loss of some of that lo-fi charm and a shift from beachy dream-pop towards post-punk surf-rock. The strengths of the album are stocked towards the front. “Clash the Truth,” “Generation Synthetical,” and “Sleep Apnea” are all short, solid excursions through realms of soft-focus indie introspection. Employing bouncing bass grooves and energetic drum lines more typical to surf music, they weave through sweet melancholies, caustic apathies, and fearful angsts all to interesting results. Here the first real difference to their new sound becomes noticeable. Whereas in the debut album the vocals were far-back and wrapped in hollow reverbs, now they are crisp, upfront, and cleanly produced. The old style lent the music a dreamy, beachy quality that let the sounds drift over you with soothing flow. Here though, stripped more bare from effects, the vocals sound with less texture; they are heavier with that slight laze which is typical to punk rock.
While the vocals work for the style of the first three tracks, when “Careless” came around I was thrown off. The track opens with an upbeat, sentimentally expansive manner of strummed guitar. But then the heavy, slow vocals intrude, and they just don’t carry enough energy to match the rapid drive and heightened emotion of the song. The outcome is a confused feel, like two adverse styles of music clashing discordantly.
“Taking Off Stem” returns to heavy surf grooves with a backing of instrumentals of the Vampire-Weekend variety. “Shallow” does not stray too much further, garnering a bit more of a brighter sound and soothing melodic drift. “Burn You Down” is the most unique of the bunch with its splashy groove and dark lulling vocals, but when “Birthday” opens up you’ll swear you’re hearing the same songs as before. The repetitiveness of the bass grooves and percussive lines undermines the creativity of the latter punk-rock tracks, except for “In Vertigo,” which wanders back towards shoegaze territory.
It was with the final track “Crashed Out” that the problem of the album for me became exacerbated. Kicking up a typical punk groove, the song adopted a faster tempo than earlier tracks, yet the beachy vocals remained at the same lyrical pace. The two elements drag at each other. Plenty of bands out there have blended punk and shoegaze, but here they are made to feel like water and oil. The music of the first album meanwhile always had a sense of melodic continuity for me. Still, there’s plenty here that succeeds, and no stalwart Beach Fossils fan should miss it.
