Restraint

Somewhere in the late 2000s, indie rock's love affair with the beach picked back up in a major way. Bands like Best Coast, Surfer Blood, Real Estate, and the like hit it big with surfy guitars, summery themes, and generally sunny dispositions that stirred up thoughts of gentle waves and beach blanket nostalgia. Hailing from the historically overcast Pacific Northwest, Orca Team are sometimes wrapped up with the sunburnt musings of their peers, mistaken for a breezy beach outfit due to their reverb-doused guitar tones and brief, seemingly light-hearted pop tunes. Closer inspection of the trio's second full-length, Restraint, reveals this as a huge misnomer. While spring reverb and snappy drumming are at the core of the band's sound, dark skies are the only skies Orca Team live under, and the 11 quick tunes here barely conceal their gloomy themes with upbeat tempos and catchy melodies. The group's minimal sound leaves a lot of space for all the details of those catchy moments to shine. Leif Anders' bright, sometimes twee vocals and heavily plucked basslines with every note swathed in reverb detract from lyrics about unhealthy power dynamics and doomed relationships. Bearing more in common with the insular warmth of Unrest at their absolute best, Orca Team fill Restraint with an economical series of melancholic turns, wasting no space or energy in any of their concisely brilliant compositions. If there were any beach reference points here, they'd point to the influence of the Marine Girls' minimal coastal genius or the summertime sadness that Galaxie 500 sometimes tapped into. Songs like "Been Crying All Day," "Too Busy to Love Me," and the Young Marble Giants-esque croon of "Night Moves" all put on a brave face, waving bright colors and sharp production, but these are not carefree anthems of a fun summer. Under their happy-go-lucky exterior, Orca Team's pop is sophisticated, moody, and dealing with some complex stuff in a graveyard somewhere miles away from the beach. ~ Fred Thomas|