Graham Reid | | <1 min read
On My Way
Although the charts would suggest there's no great demand for them, people still form guitar-driven rock bands.
Something in the camaraderie of like minds as much just getting together to make a thrilling noise?
Auckland five-piece Ocean Beach -- named for the former freezing works in wind-blown Bluff at the bottom of the South Island -- manage both on this debut album with committed power pop, psyche-rock, ferocious instrumentals (the opener Savage Buckets) and even nods to Britpop (On My Way, the social comment in Boy's Club).
Come Around is radio-playable pop-rock and there's also a little space rock with the instrumental Omuamua which closes the first side of the vinyl but also leads into the dreamy Omnism which opens a more measured second half.
Ocean Beach command a lot of genres: they recently covered Pavement's Heaven is a Truck and an early single was the garageband drone thrash of Evil Little People.
That diversity is corralled on this album which is styled as a conceptual and sonic road trip from the south: the milieu of Invercargill pubs (Tower of Babel) and working life (Boy's Club) then the journey to a destination and the final instrumental, the prog-rock title track, is perfect highway driving music.
Long Road Home is a punchy and forthright collection of discrete and quite terrific songs delivered with disciplined passion.
Let's hope there is a demand for it, they deserve it.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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