Surfer Blood :: "Swim (Til You Reach The End)"

We're going to take two disjointed anecdotes and tie them together with loose strings.

One: I have understandably mixed feelings about the movement being called "glo-fi" by some, "warm-fi" by others. For one, it comprises too many individual things. Are you a synth-band with a shitty microphone? Welcome to the club. Are you a surf-rock band with an authority problem? It's probably glo-fi. Are you a folk-band with a penchant for shoegaze? Glo-fi. Like the upbeat cousin of No Age and Times New Viking, we've fallen another foot deeper down the meaningless-genre-rabbit-hole. It's not that these bands are bad. They are just another exhibition of the indie rock taste-machine, loose and disorganized as it is.

Two: My favorite speech in a bad movie is Leo Dicaprio in 1999's seminal disaster The Beach. It comes moments after he's killed a shark and is re-telling his story to the group. He's already sleeping with the French guy's girl and has developed the same relationship with Karma that Michael Vick once had with pitbulls. You know something bad is going to happen. This is his last great moment; the apex before the fall. If you were an over-zealous high school student, you would rush to use the word "hamartia." All of this is irrelevant as Dicaprio scans the crowd and describes his fateful moment with the words: "No. I will not. die. today!" I don't care for this movie but I love this line. It is defiant and bold and the exact moment before everything goes bad.

So Surfer Blood have this song, "Swim (Til You Reach The End)." It's both glo-fi and I like it. The genre isn't about to go horribly wrong, but it is living on borrowed time. And when it's gone, and completely forgotten, we will be left with little moments like these, all tied together with almost nothing at all.

Listen :: Surfer Blood - "Swim (Til You Reach The End)"