Review Summary: ho hey let's not
March 3rd, 2023. I wake up, grab my phone, and check this week’s new album releases - nothing special. New Haken: probably not for me. New Acres: probably not as good as it should be. New Macklemore: probably not for anyone. New Beach Weather: probably… wait, what’s good? Didn’t this silly little indie pop band I used to enjoy back in 2016 call it quits years ago? Why the hell do they sit at eleven million monthly listeners on Spotify?
The answer, as with most things in life, starts with a T and ends in ikTok. Last summer, the band’s deep cut ‘Sex, Drugs, Etc.’ went viral on the app, amassing hundreds of millions of plays and, according to Alternative Press, “that [...] success reinvigorated the band’s passion for making music together”. Unfortunately, none of this alleged “passion” can be felt on Beach Weather’s debut album
Pineapple Sunrise as it is nothing but an outdated, underwritten and poorly produced attempt to capitalise on a viral moment that has, in internet time, long since passed.
For whatever reason, the Nick Santino-fronted trio decided that early-2010s stomp-clap hipster pop was the way to go for their 2023 (two thousand and twenty-three) record. It’s a baffling choice: while neither of their EPs were groundbreaking, they nailed a playful and cutesy indie vibe that felt completely carefree.
Pineapple Sunrise is anything but carefree: while its synths and strums aim to replicate the sensation of a calm summer breeze, the claustrophobic production evokes being stuck on a damp train with damp strangers on an uncomfortably sweaty summer day instead. The only two songs that manage to somewhat escape this overwhelming sense of entrapment are the closing cuts: however, upon closer inspection ‘Wildfire’ turns out to be severely underwritten track that mostly just isn’t as utterly unlistenable as everything before it, and ‘Sex, Drugs, Etc.’ is a (the) song from seven years ago. (Yeah, they included the viral hit from yesteryear on this record because of all their “reinvigorated passion”, for sure.)
In order to make it to these two not-terrible songs, however, you will need to sit through nine terrible tracks that are not worth anyone’s time. In case I haven’t sold you on not listening to this thing yet, allow me to quote some lyrical gems from random songs: “
Your energy in my room / I wanna go back there soon / The feelings I get with you”; “
Homebody, just a homebody / Let me slide for a while, slide for a while / Oh, mmm / Na-na-na-na-na / Oh, mmm, mmm / Na-na-na-na-na”. In case you’re wondering what Nick Santino’s official song explanation on Genius says for this last one: “Homebody is about being a homebody. That’s about it”. It’s vaguely respectable in the sense that he’s not even trying to pretend any effort was put into this abomination. That being said, my personal favourite
Pineapple Sunrise quote comes in the form of ‘Trouble With This Bed’s chorus: it builds and swells while stating the song title several times before the grand reveal - you won’t believe it: “
The trouble with this bed is / That I’m the only one in it”. F
uck me (actually, please don’t).
Lastly, every single performance on
Pineapple Sunrise is absolutely flavourless. In the past, Nick Santino has proven himself to be a rather enjoyable and versatile vocalist: here, he hides behind an unpleasant vocal filter and refuses to even fake any passion or effort whatsoever. Guitars are present, probably, but you sure as hell won’t remember them. The only memorable thing about this record are its repulsively stompy mid-tempo textures that would make your average mumford question whether music was a good idea in the first place. This record is a painfully awful no-effort cash grab from the guy that said “I can relate to the meaning of it personally” about a song he himself wrote. Yikes.
