The Golden Age: Good Vibrations

*MP3: The Drums - “Let’s Go Surfing”
*MP3: The Beach Boys - “God Only Knows”
*MP3: The Beach Boys - “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”

The Drums are a band from Florida, via Brooklyn, that sound a lot like The Beach Boys, or at least the kind of sounds Brian Wilson would have been exploring if he had not been charged with creating the original sound himself. The Drums specifically play early Beach Boys music, with contemporary bits sprinkled here and there to give each catchy chorus a more friendly vibe for the modern kids. Their music is mostly sad, in the vein of middle to late Beach Boys, and even the up-tempo and seemingly innocent numbers like “Let’s Go Surfing” have that vague trace of hopeless melancholy that could only come with post-60s knowledge.

There are no four or five part vocal harmonies in The Drums. For that, you’ll have to listen to Fleet Foxes or, to a lesser extent, Grizzly Bear. Fleet Foxes don’t sound as much like The Beach Boys as they do Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, but the intent of four or five distinctive voices soaring in harmony that made The Beach Boys famous is still the same (Al Jardine is a fan). The improbable ability of the human voice box to create chordal synergy is paramount to the band’s success in a field of electronic pop music. On the other hand, Animal Collective sound like an extension of The Beach Boys’ “Feel Flows” from the band’s darkest album, Surf’s Up, where strange electronic blips and swirls collide with cascading vocals in a kind of joyously unnerving state. They, among any modern bands, seem the most natural inheritors and expanders of The Beach Boys sound. Panda Bear even sounds like Carl Wilson.

So why surfer music, and why now? Well, there may never be a completely tangible reason why sounds come back as influences years after they lose currency in their own time. Young people seem to have an acute knowledge of what is hip in their generation and gravitate to whatever established influences will inform that. The early surfer sound initiated and developed by The Beach Boys is always appealing because of its eternally sunny disposition. But that coupled with the band’s later gravitas created a sound that perhaps has currency for our time and for all time: that the endless summer days of youth cannot last, and that what lies beyond the warm shallows of the beach are only the breakers and the dark enveloping sea. Surf’s up, dude.

- The Golden Age is a weekly column written by Erik Martz.