Lana Del Rey was similarly criticised earlier this year for the lyric “And there we were, screaming ‘Black Lives Matter’ in the crowd”, but at least she was expressing some sort of opinion on the movement. The line “Written on the concrete / ACAB” - which is never further elaborated on in the song’s two-and-a-half minutes - feels like a particularly poor and cynical attempt at political point-scoring gesturing at anti-police sentiment without ever taking anything even remotely close to stance on it.
In the past, the band’s compelling and quietly complex arrangements have made it easy to overlook any flaws in their writing, but here they leave listeners no choice but to look at these inadequacies face on.
Beach Fossils have never been bad lyricists, per se, it’s just that lyricism has never been their central strength in the way it is for many other indie artists. The band’s newfound hyper-minimalism also puts greater focus than ever on their lyricism something that only occasionally works in their favour. As a result, all eight songs here inevitably blur into a pleasant, if not particularly captivating, fog. Nearly all these songs, however, follow a near identical formula meaning what at first feels genuinely beautiful becomes repetitive and predictable by the album’s end. Opener, “This Year” stands out as a highlight the minimalist piano instrumentation makes Dustin Payseur’s lilting vocals the central focus and the saxophone solo that swells and fades throughout the song is sublime. Unfortunately, these piano re-workings only intermittently achieve their desired transcendence and intimacy. It’s an admirably risky choice to take for a band whose music has relied so consistently on guitar-driven, indie-rock arrangements.
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