Surfer Blood, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas

Surfer Blood’s lead singer John Paul Pitts enters the stage, surveys the Butlins ATP crowd and says in his best Floridian drawl ‘Hey baby, how’s it going?’. It makes a weird kind of sense - their pop-punk takes on adolescent life may have been done many times before but it’s their effervescence and brilliantly brain-burrowing riffs that make them stand out. Let’s be honest, a lot of bands try to do what they do but you don’t see many managing it.

Tonight at Nightmare Before Christmas they deliver a set that doesn’t quite ignite as much as it could have done but still has fully grown, bearded men in the crowd doing power grabs – and when you’re at ATP that’s no mean feat.

They play a mixture of debut album ‘Astro Coast’ and cuts from their rather marvellous new EP ‘Tarot Classics’. Their Bossanova-era Pixies buzz-saw riffs fill the Centre Stage with the warm vibes that only an ‘American college rock’ band can.

It starts with ‘Twin Peaks’, includes a musical interlude when guitar problems hit and, apart from that, the only misstep is a cover version of ‘Box Elder’ by Pavement (it doesn’t really hit the mark and sounds a little too murky). They are even brave enough to bring out a couple of brand new songs, which on first listen seems to build on their sound.

‘Tarot Classics’ soon to be actual classics ‘Miranda’ and ‘I’m Not Ready’ are given even bigger bounce when played live, their huge riffs inducing a collective smile throughout the room. With ‘Take It Easy’ they get the initially static crowd start pogoing, toss away their ‘hit’ ‘Swim’ three quarters of the way through the set and finish with ‘Anchorage’ (probably, in this humble writer’s opinion, their best song), as Pitts drops the guitar and makes his way towards the audience, strutting and swaggering his way around the stage.

Surfer Blood make the type of perfect pop music that should be huge, like Weezer if they dropped the self-consciousness and hang ups and just got on with the act of making fantastic tunes. Tonight wasn’t the gig that will make that happen but it was still an enticing glimpse of a band who have a lot to offer.