Crashing Into The Sun delivers surf rock laced indie pop that slides into cheekily sinister territory. In a word, this debut album from Hey Geronimo is ambitious. Millions Of Miles builds into a galloping, twangy cowboy rock echo before quickly bleeding into Lazer Gun Show, a space rock inspired stadium chant complete with ‘heys’, ‘hos’ and keyboard solos. Inversely, Bermuda turns a tale of a driver plunging to a watery death off a cliff into a dreamy surf pop ballad about floating along the East Australian tide.
Hearing lyrics such as “cruising through the ocean with my flooded combustion, electric eels power my motion” elicit an Octopus’s Garden like display of imaginary anthropomorphic animals and cutesy adventures. That is until you realise the horrible reality of the depicted situation.
Hey Geronimo are ultimately trying to blend the darkness of the content with sunny vibes to create interesting contrast, but haven’t quite figured out the blend yet. Songs that hit that perfect medium like Bermuda are far and few between, and when that pendulum of sweet and sour swings, it swings hard.
Bake A Cake in particular is far too saccharine; it’s flawlessly engineered to get inside your head and will no doubt slot snugly into youth radio playlists. However, the ultra boppy ode to learning from past mistakes is annoyingly earnest and dripping with cheesy rhetoric. Everybody likes sweets, but you can’t survive entirely on sugar – it just makes you queasy.
The album is better when it drops the flashy pretense and shoots for a feel that reflects the lyrics. India and Boredom are the two best songs included because they carry slightly heavier, rockier edges to suit their self-destructive themes.
Stumbling blocks such as those are so frustrating, because the band is obviously packed to the brim with talent. There are beautiful flourishes trapped amongst the poppy backdrop trying to break out. They understand their craft well, but shift gears just a little too quickly, jumping in and out of interesting ideas before you can settle in to enjoy them.
BY JACOB COLLIVER
