Courtesy of St. Augustine

Guantanamo Baywatch ‰ÛÒ Boy Like Me

Once the summer roles around I tend to remove myself from the indie hype machine and gravitate to music I already know and love, which for me includes a lot of garage rock, a lot of surf rock, and a lot of music recorded between 1952 and 1965. Lucky for me, Guantanamo Baywatch‰’s Darling…It‰’s Too Late was released just in time for me to indulge in almost all of my summertime peccadilloes. Kitschy as a pink flamingo but deftly avoiding Hunx-level camp, Guantanamo Baywatch play with an earnestness that manages to cut through their gloriously muddled production and straight to your blue sueded feet. I especially enjoy penultimate track “Boy Like Me,‰” which deviates from the group‰’s usual garage/surf formula into a sound more reminiscent of doo-wop and rockabilly. Guided rhythmically by a pumping piano and swooning backing vocal, guitarist/vocalist Jason Powell sprinkles Dick Daleian chords and offers a vocal performance that toes the line between over the top and on point. While there‰’s a lo-fi haze across the song and Powell sounds like he‰’s slipping his Eisenhower-era vagaries between The Joker‰’s yellowed teeth, Guantanamo Baywatch do an amazing job of capturing the helpless romanticism of their musical forefathers, where the greatest tragedy imaginable was a broken heart and the greatest triumph holding hands. After laying down a tubular guitar solo, Powell‰’s vocals reach for an impassioned key change amid a chorus of handclaps, temporarily washing away any irony or perversion surrounding the group and lifting them to the sort of transcendence found in music aimed directly towards a love-struck teenager‰’s heart. They don‰’t make ‰em quite like they used too, but sometimes they come pretty close.

RIYL: Hunx and his Punx, Shannon and the Clams, The King Khan and BBQ Show