«Clash The Truth» Beach Fossils (English Version)

Clash The Truth
Artist: Beach Fossils
Year: 2013
Captured Tracks
Score: 8.6

Beach Fossils is the iconic New York band formed in 2009 who after their first self titled album became one the artist who defined the future of shoegaze to a new generation. With their sophomore studio record «Clash The Truth» the band comes in strong with faster rhythms, sharp lyrics focused on social awareness and existentialism and, most importantly, a real sign of musical growth.

«Clash The Truth» is a personal call of rebelion towards awareness and to bring back the ability of enjoying the everyday aspects of life again, but above all else, its a statement of not settling down and keep wanting to be better.

The first lines sing «Life can be so vicious that we can’t appreciate its purities» and the rest of the song serves as a healty recommendation about taking a step back and enjoy the view kind of advice. As if it was some kind of pledge, the band sings along a powerful semi-chorus that becomes instantly iconic and catchy.

Then, in «Generational Synthetic» Dustin Payseur makes an interesting and resentful instrosprection of how the artistic spirit is constantly being repressed by our modern and systematic way of living. It seams to me quite ironic that this rebel song plays in the distinctive apathetic way of singing that shoegaze and dreampop are known for; However the sound itself of this genre its the one in charge of bringing the element of excitement to the meaning behind the track.

«Sleep Apnea» Was the first song I listened and my first encounter with Beach Fossils. I remember vividly being at my house terrace during a cold winter brake morning, wrapped in a blanket in order to bear the icy weather at sunrise, which I had been waiting after a sleepless night. I randomly put on a lo-fi playlist where «Sleep Apnea» appeared as the opening track as I witnessed the dark sky turn blue and then pastel pink for a couple minutes.

I felt so understood by the song, the sincerity with which every note was being played wrapped me in a lukewarm feeling like the blanket I had on me. The simple arpeggiated guitar melody backed up by what I can only describe as a melancholic drum set and a therapeutic synth, made me play that song again and again until I felt satisfied.

Immediately after experimenting the existential uncertainty of looking at your bedroom ceiling hopelessly (as pointed out by the last track) we change pace into «Careless», where the same uncertainty and lack of direction becomes a powerful driving force towards living in the moment without concern for tomorrow. «Modern Holiday» comes as the first interlude of this record after such intense emotions.

«Taking Off» is next, doing reference to the alarming realization that growing up is a one way road that has to be walked alone.

«Shallow» Takes on a more interpersonal motif talking about the lack of excitement in a couple, growing apart, and simply the unavoidable fact that everything eventually comes to an end. As the lyrics reflect on this breaking point in relationships, it blows me away how Tommy Gardner achieves to convey into his drum playing such desperate feelings portrayed in the lyrics.

Oh yes, everyone has identified at least once in their life as not the best couple material to someone who is looking for a stable commitment, and either way we let that person come into our life and find out by him or herself the unprepared significant other we can be. «Burn You Down» its precisely about this.

I personally loved «Birthday» because in its short and abstract lines you can find a song full of energy and dynamism. Really, this album parts from general to a more particular viewpoint emphasizing on how we should learn to live our lives before trying to involve in anything else.

On «In Vertigo» Dusting sings along a powerful bass line and the almost sigh of a voice of Kazu Makino, vocalist from Blond Redhead. «In Verigo» its by definition a perfect example of fine silky shoegaze.

«Brighter» works as a second interlude resulting in the track «Caustic Cross», a song that turns out monotone, and that interupts with the melodic sense of the album. It really comes across as a filler song that makes little sense in how the record has been put together.

«Asencion» is the third and final interlude that bridges the last song of the album, «Crashed Out»

Beach Fossils finishes the record with a shoegaze odyssey that has as main theme a seemingly ordinary scene of a couple talking and taking a stroll through New York city. You can almost picture Dustin in a black and white screen having a conversation with this girl while he reveals to us his inner fantasies about a promising future without feeling presure at all.

Definitely this sonorous novel that has been Clash The Truth, comes to an end in a hopeful light after a turbulent analysis of the society that we live in nowadays and the roles we fulfill in it.