Beach Fossils - Beach Fossils

There really is just something about the way Beach Fossils main/only man Dustin Payseur plays his guitar... I mean, his woozy lines aren't, on the face of it, vastly different to those label mate Jack Tatum plucks beneath all the Cure-esque synths on his debut as Wild Nothing. Nor are they straying too far from the ball park that Best Coast is currently fuzzing up so enjoyably. Indeed Beach Fossils happily sit next to the great and the good of the current lo-fi American invasion led by the likes of Woods, Real Estate, Vivian Girls, Ganglians... I could go on. But there's something a little different here. There's a simple warmth to how Payseur plays on on this, his debut record. It's a style that is as infectious as it is just plain lovely, and one that sees him better just about all of his peers.
 
It's also perhaps the reason why Beach Fossils have yet to really attract the same level of bloggy buzz heaped on the Wild Nothings of today or the Wavves of yesterday. There's nothing flashy amongst these 11 tracks, nothing that immediately pronounces Dustin Payseur as the new so and so. In fact, the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking he's just another lo-fi slacker but would only actually be absolved if they then recognized the immense subtlety that's at play here. The kind of subtlety that makes the slow prodding of 'Window View' more heart-wrenching by the listen or the quicker paces of 'Daydream' more delightful. Indeed the further you explore, the more 'Sometimes', 'Vacation', 'Twelve Roses' and 'Golden Ages' - to name but four - sound like near standards of their kind. There's not even a sniff of a dud on Beach Fossils and the deftness throughout very quickly becomes compelling and damned addictive.  

And the secret? Well, apparently there is none. "I wish I could share (it)," Dustin Payseur told Ragged Words last month. "But I don't technically know what I'm doing!" It might actually ruin things a little if he did know because this writer quite enjoys not technically knowing how this little record crept its way up from a good first listen to the best consistent listen of the year so far. An unraveling minor masterpiece.