Album Review: At The Beach

The Bobby Holidays’ At The Beach opens with the song Jane, syncopation is to the fore with a great horn section blowing against bass, drums and guitar. The song has an up tempo happy summer vibe. The horn section highlights its skill in an excellent solo.

Second track, When She Comes feels a bit like The Bats meets The Byrds, opens with a four on the floor beat. Lyrically it plays on the classic “She’ll be coming round the mountain..”, but the music is so excellently put together, and it is enough of a reworking, that it is completely forgivable.

Song three Alcohol, is another up-tempo funk inspired number with the horns to the front again with more highly skilled playing. Alcohol’s words are about regret.

On the fourth track, Don’t Worry Baby, it’s back to Dunedin in the 1980’s, jangling guitars and excellent vocal harmonies. The latter part of this song slides in to ska.

There are definitely a couple of different song writing styles present in The Bobby Holidays on At The Beach.

By song 7, The Alamo, there is a familiar format to the songs. The structure is familiar across all the songs on the album.

Title track, At The Beach, sums up the band really well; musically it’s very fun, up tempo and playful. There’s no mistaking the band would be excellent to see live.

Milky Way is slower with the band leaning into a version of reggae similar to later period Beach Boys.

The closing song End of The Rainbow is another slower number like the last song of the night, the slow dance as it were.

At The Beach is an album which grows on the listener, but has immediate charm on first listen too. There are definite 1960’s influences all over the LP, band names like Beatles and Byrds come to mind, and I’m sure I can hear at least one Rickenbacker guitar on the recording, and there sounds like some Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, influence, along with more than a hint of Roger McGuinn.

Good album gents.