Danello, The Sad Surfer - Danello, The Sad Surfer

Full disclosure up front - Dan Taggart played guitar in Goalie Fight. Danello, the Sad Surfer is his solo project, taking the Beach Boys meets Animal Collective spirit of his previous band Skytop Motel forward on his own. His split EP with ex-Skytop bandmate Possum in my Room (the imaginatively titled Split) was recorded in my basement. I tried to buy this from him at his album release show at the former Sanctuary in Boonton, but he insisted I take it for free.

The CD cover is good-looking. The charmingly rough watercolor cover was painted by the man himself. The rear and interior covers are minimal, and the text is a little bit off-alignment. There’s no lyric page and the insert is just front and back to save cost. Overall, the CD art is an awkward and shy introduction, but it is one that is authentic to the persona of the record.

Danello, the Sad Surfer starts off with the appropriately named “Surfman Dan”, which is groovy, beachy, and soul-inflected. Dan doesn’t do any vibrato and very little melisma, but the melody and bright harmonies evoke that era of American songwriting. His voice is clean and smooth, but withdrawn and shy. “Washing Away” is a march, but a twinkly march. The percussion (provided by Ted Orbach from Possum in my Room) is very restrained and cool. Because Dan performs these songs on solo electric guitar, the focus on the record is usually on the guitar riffs. “Chorale” is a rare exception to this rule, with its choral harmonies and transistor organ taking center stage. The fourth track, “Frog”, is definitely my favorite. It teases a return to the march feel of “Washing Away”, but it uses the instrumental four on the floor to build up these celestial harmonies over a high guitar arpeggio. It then switches to a waltz-time, double-picking verse with clacking sidesticks and a plaintive, cozy melody. “Frog” sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard in the best way.

We reach the halfway point of the record with “Spaceman Dan”, a spaced out, modulated song that almost sounds like Steve Lacy or Anderson .Paak with a glide guitar. We are shocked back to the beach with “O, Lovely World”, the hardest rocking song on the album. Even then, it’s more Weezer than it is Winger with its cheerful melodies and its depressed lyrics. The contrast between light melody and dark lyric is a classic one in power pop songwriting, and Dan makes good use of it all over Danello, the Sad Surfer. There’s an interlude that’s half-surf and half-20th century news program interstitial music, creatively titled “Interlude” (Dan has never been the best at naming things). And then there’s “Luna, the Surf Angel”. In less deft hands, this vocal bossa nova tune would be schmaltzy and insincere, but because the instrumental is so stripped back and the three part harmonies aren’t auto-tuned and left slightly ragged, the song feels more like it comes from the heart. There’s barely any percussion, only on the B and C section. There’s only one guitar track, cassette-wobbly and bright. The song is awkward and pure like a teenaged confession of love. It’s an encapsulation of everything I like about this record - idiosyncratic, bright, sincere, and deceptively technical. There’s also two more bonus tracks on the disc which I won’t spoil.

Danello, the Sad Surfer is a good album, and I like it.