Beach Fossils
Somersault

Music, like a healthy walk or a jog, is a kind of medicine for the soul, an anti-therapeutic medicine par excellence, which when taken in the right doses, makes you feel good and relaxes the various organs.
Provided you find the right soundtrack. Converge destabilizes solar systems creating new black holes and Black Flag does nothing but fuel social anger, and at the moment, something is needed to lull you to sleep and fill lunch breaks or aperitif times, while chasing away the nightmare of Tommy-Lee Paradiso dressed as a lifeguard chasing you down the beaches of Romagna throwing mojitos full of fig at you. And they, the Beach Fossils, show up with a name that inspires trust and with that pure cover, which nevertheless deceives you a little.

The bonus rays of light and the stretched-out times of June require an update of the playlist with new cascades of fresh notes to find some refreshment and escape the cage of stuffiness. And as much as one might be traditionalist, and relentlessly play Tycho or Washed Out on the beach, at times one must go beyond the horizon, it's never good to fossilize too much, and not listen to the unknown, not even with records.

"A record that sounds as one would expect, without stepping out of its comfort zone…” this is how some time ago I described “In Mind,” the last very tender offering from Real Estate (already prematurely the record-owl of the year together with "Saturday," best jinx of the year) right here.
The quote is intentional since the Beach Fossils adopt the same jangle-pop noble matrices used to build soft edifices with large windows that let in plenty of light.
However, “Somersault” seems to disregard genre and boundaries, and it's here where lies the greatest difference with the still good album by Mart Courtney's band.

If the initial and contemplative “This Year” is the already tested ride on which to invite their old fanbase, “Tangerine Dream” catches the eye also for the excellent guest appearance of Rachel Goswell from Slowdive adding further warmth to the non-chorus mercury columns. The temperature begins to rise.
The definitive change of attire that sees the entry of a new attitude in Dustin Payseu's songbook is “Saint Ivy,” a baroque-pop episode between the ‘80s and the latest The Last Shadows Puppets, enriched with piano chimes and a pleasant flute solo, concluding in a blaze of sonic fascinations.
The second, highly curious guest appearance of the record sees rapper Cities Aviv take the microphone in the brief spot of “Rise,” accompanied by a sax, in an unheard urban-hip-hop scenario.

Now pay attention and take your pen and note “1st May”: it’s the most Byrds circa 1966 you will hear this year. But the songbook remains truly rich in cues amid shoegaze digressions (“Be Nothing”), pianos, and atmospheres that nonchalantly touch the ‘r’n’b’ from channel 67 (“Social Jetleg”), and especially the languid “Sugar,” which would be the perfect alternative advertisement for the Algida cornetto, albeit not too randomly named as a single.

“Somersault” with its desire to take risks could represent the exclamation point of the Beach Fossils, the sudden leap that delivers at perfect timing the ideal pop record to play this summer under the beach umbrella.