EP

Insound Staff Pick - 2009! This is the debut release by New Zealand's Surf City. An anachronism right at the beginning, Surf City was founded in a video library, in this dying-out relic of an analogue age. When Davin Stoddard and Josh Kennedy ran into each other one evening in their small town, Josh had just bought a sound card and Davin a four-track. This debut EP is storming and strolling, light-footed, laconic and pop -- produced in an excessively lo-fi a manner as possible. Surf City is about the simplicity of sound, perfectly encapsulating pop music's essence, that bands like Pavement, The Zombies or The Jesus and Mary Chain share as a smallest common denominator. Everyone who has ever heard the breakers against New Zealand's coast suspects that Brian Wilson has a beach house in Surf City as well. However, New Zealand's legendary era of rock music resides in the Flying Nun label and with bands like The Clean or Tall Dwarfs. Nevertheless, the rumbling atmosphere of "Headin' Inside" could have been released by Flying Nun Records as well -- not as a nostalgic revival of good old times -- but rather as a self-confident continuation of a legendary sound. With Morr Music, Surf City has found a congenial home.