by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Last year Los Angeles via Miami via France’s brightest experimental pop duo Pearl & The Oysters followed the cosmic joy of 2021’s Flowerland by announcing they’d joined the ranks of Stones Throw Records (Automatic, Quakers, NxWorries), a home that fits the band’s penchant for deep artistic grooves and glistening sonic warmth. Coast 2 Coast, the band’s fourth album and first for Stones Throw, documents the band’s journey from their former home in Florida to their current home in LA, building a surrealistic odyssey of video games, ocean front beaches, and fantastical bliss. Moving from one vast ocean to the next, across the highways and .expanse of middle America, Pearl & The Oysters use their daydream psych to bring a sense of the majestic to the mundane.
Whether coming to terms with boredom and the endless possibilities of all we could be doing (“Fireflies”), two-stepping into cascading psych at it’s most saccharine sweet on a road trip where nothing seems quite as advertised (“Pacific Ave”) or preparing for launch into orbit (“Space Coast”), the duo of Joachim Polack and Juliette Pearl Davis are crafting intricate pop, with layers that reveal themselves in time. Created with hints of Stereolab and Broadcast’s retro-futurism and touches of French yé-yé music, the band sound perpetually carefree but the actual structures prove otherwise as they weave and manipulate deceptively sinuous synths and electronic nuances into every imaginative turn. The textures have been left out in the sun, the imprint of beach chairs and sand made a permanent fixture.
The record’s early singles - “Pacific Ave,” "Konami,” and “Paraiso” each offers a variation on the album’s meditative moods but the band always retain their dream-pop cohesion and space-age radiance. Their rhythms are as much about function as they are feel, the drums could make great hip-hop if they were isolated from the shimmering exuberance of everything else. Beats crack and slink in the pocket, dragging behind the sunshine reflections of squiggly synths, animated omnichords, flutes and a plethora of auxiliary textures, both percussive and melodic. It’s with the backbone of head-nodding grooves that the band are able to launch into deep cosmic Tropicalia, riding the relaxation of the summer as they melt away all concerns. Coast 2 Coast would rather be in the middle of the ocean, riding waves of lush harmonies and kaleidoscopic pop than give into the stresses of everyday life. Grab a drink with an umbrella in it. Put on a straw hat. Drift out with Pearl & The Oysters to an island of hazy comfort.