Lyrically and musically evocative surf-themed album from Virginia-based Stephen Jacques.
Stephen Jacques’s last release, Pioneers and Fragrant Flowers, was favourably reviewed on these pages last year, our reviewer Fred Arnold praising its dazzling lyrical imagery around the album’s theme of the American frontier story. His latest release, Les Surfeurs De Santa Cruz, takes an equally focused but different direction, into the world of the surfer. This proves to be a rich vein, both lyrically and in terms of musical inspiration.
So, surf rock is there in abundance, but also signs of Jacques’ earlier New York roots, as his vocals often take a Willie Nile-esque feel, both in tone and phrasing, semi-spoken, and with a distinctive break in his voice. And Nile’s punky energy is there too, in tracks like South France Memory, featuring those spat-out lines, Jacques singing “espresso shots at high noon/ flame magnifique silk/ marble hallways/ wandered Nice ‘n’ Cannes like thieves/ chased down dusk through burning streets”.
Album opener Surfer Spot Steamer Lane references a renowned Santa Cruz surfing location, requiring both skill and nerve to ride the waves, with Jacques lyric taking the experience as a metaphor for rising to life’s challenges “cliff drops wild where locals pray /sea spray washed my sins away/ dreams rode high/thunder’s shroud/ wicked winds sang proud”, with a powerful opening riff, and up tempo drive emphasising the thrill of the ride.
Twin Fin Dreams is a piece of classic power pop, with a Cars-like riff, and added ear candy from the steel guitar of Chris Siebold, also credited with guitars, alongside Gerald Dowd on drums, and Vijay Tellis-Nayak on keyboards.
Surf Queens Ballad could be an early country tinged Stones song, an aching ballad, as the singer laments being eclipsed by the female surfer who beats his best, singing “flex cracked through a barrel at noon/ lungs on fire in a foaming tomb/ steel-spined rats in flight/ sparks arc wild on ocean’s white/ thought I owned the break/’til a surfing queen crushed my take/ She strolled the strand/ teased obscene/ like a tyrant ruling the scene”.
Another classic surf rock riff opens Jacqui’s Surf Thrash, a tale of a farm girl who finds her vocation lies with the ocean instead: “don’t care ’bout farm no more/ found heaven thrashin’ wood on a savage shore/ crowds froze up/ waves would roar /she didn’t pose/ her style kicked down every door.”
Top-notch lyrics and characterful vocals make this an album worthy of repeated listening.
