THROAT LOAF

alaskan surf punk from LA

When you put your ear to the whorled mouth of a conch, you hear the gentle howl of the sea. It’s a beloved trick, why, but for the very fact that the thing has come to us from the ocean. It’s as though the shell carries its birthplace with it, wherever it goes. Of course this is merely an effect of coincidence. We seem nonetheless to like this kind of auditory nostalgia. Yes, let us have it on demand, even when we’re far, especially when we’re far.

This is why music is often tasked with capturing the feeling of a place. And here, unlike the conch, it happens by design, by the intentional composer. To those who appreciate this element in music, I recommend “Surf Zombie,” the latest single by LA band Throat Loaf.

The piece begins with a few rumbling seconds of freeform chuckling and generic noise. Then the group launches into an uptempo beachpunk-shuffle topped by throaty vocals. Glittering keyboard arpeggios support the galloping drums. Possibly due to the doubling effect of the vocals, the listener feels she is in the presence of a minor multitude. Or at least she’s invited to cautiously dissolve into a midday crowd. Yes, this is the spirit here — a caffeine nap on the sand, amid the throng; a bleary walk upstream the skaters and rollerbladers. The sun and the others are here, always here. Let’s smile then at the tragedy of an endless noon, says Throat Loaf, or at least laugh at it.

Surf Zombie fits squarely in the California tradition. The music is bleached and aloof. What happens when the vengeful LA sun burns the fog off northern punk? You get summery tones, electric twang, ghoulish repetition. Everything in the sound is purposed to bottle that feeling which it would be counterproductive to attempt to further describe.

But what of the lyrics? The song tells the story of a troubled porn addict attempting to follow the sun and the shadow of the American pioneers ever west. But the footpaths are too well trodden, and our hero knows this. Originality has been ruled out by an age ruled by a monopoly of clichés. How can he live happily, how can he enjoy the surf and the sand and the sun, when his choices are obviated by every conceivable counterculture? Whatever he does, someone else has already done (and overdone). The postmodern dilemma is treated with care by Throat Loaf. Choosing to snub manicured sound with a single microphone and to vindicate classic strum and hi-hat patterns results in a self-awareness in the music that redeems the hero and his hackneyed lot. It reminds one of the dictum, that the best way to organize your library is to not organize it. How better to study the deepest woes than by not studying them, by marginalizing them instead, and surfing over the surface, for as long as it lasts.

Really, Surf Zombie is a musical response to the question asked first by Chernyshevsky and then reprised by Lenin: “what is to be done?” For the answer, listen in.