Danello, The Sad Surfer - Danello, The Sad Surfer III
Disclaimer: I have recording or co-writing credits on three songs on this album - “Outlaw”, “Skimboard”, and “Lilac”. I’ve played most of these songs live as either an acoustic duo or as a full band, but I’m not currently in the band. Dan’s a good friend and I’m not afraid to tell him when his music sucks, though it usually doesn’t, and when it does I try to be polite about it at least. Does anyone really care about journalistic integrity on Neocities? Anyway.
Danello, The Sad Surfer III is a return to form and a refinement of purpose. The core tropes of mid-60s rock and roll are fused with fuzzy 90s alternative music and whimsically dark lyrics. This isn’t pure Weezer-worship (though there is a lot of Weezer influence here). There’s a hint of Jeff Rosenstock at play here, especially with the way Dan seems not to care at all about stressing the right syllable when he’s singing. There’s also a bit of McCartney’s tendency for ironic “granny music” to pop in, as in the samba section of “Outlaw”, the big Disney bridge on “Skimboard”, or the entirety of “Lounge Away”. The songs are goofy and childlike without being immature or purely comic.
Danello, The Sad Surfer is the solo project of singer-songwriter Dan Taggart, formerly of Skytop Motel and Goalie Fight, but he’s not the only one on the record. Konner Hunter provides the drums and Chris Maghintay the busy bass and also the album cover design. Yours truly did the screams in the outro of “Skimboard” and helped to engineer the piano recording on “Lilac”. The largely live-tracked record feels very warm and beachy thanks to the hand percussion, spring reverb, and constant lyrical references to the shore.
It’s much clearer on this record than that Danello, The Sad Surfer doesn’t take itself too seriously. The album opens up with a song called “Welcome!”, for goodness’ sake. That song contrasts dorky Chuck Berry riffs and do-you-want-to-be-my-friend lyrics in the verse with melancholic meditations on death and change in the choruses. The second song and lead single “Kingpin” is a much tighter song overall. The echoey harmonies and the boxy distortion frame a song about how hard to push one’s luck as a rock-and-roll Monty Python and the Holy Grail banger. The guitar solo here is tasteful in its simplicity and there’s some really great internal voice leading inside the guitar chords that matches the sing-song vocal melody. It also leads really smoothly into “Lounge Away”, a fusion of Beatlesy mellotron psychedelia and beachy vibes.
The next three songs are arguably the core of the album. “Outlaw” is an alt-rock epic that runs nearly five minutes and spans from bleepy pop-rock verses to calypso pastiche choruses, following a social fuckup so bad Dan starts to fantasize “maybe I’ll move down to the tropics where they won’t extradite me”. The band’s pulse wobbles ever so slightly behind the synth arpeggio running through the verses. Then, it jumps into a shuffling, Mazzy Star-esque section where Dan croons “don’t ever look back” in one of the most intimate moments on the album. Then, he smoothly transitions from slowcore into elevator music as he restates the theme from the chorus in a samba style, and ties it all back together with one final alt rock chorus. The transitions and bridging are much smoother than they should be, showing off Dan’s strong songwriting and arrangement skills.
On “Jersey Shore” and “Skimboard”, Dan adopts alternate personas. Jersey Shore is a straight up Beach Boys song with the rock and roll boogie power chords and Mike Love “duh-duh, duh-duh-duh” vocal bass, but I’m not sure if Beach Boys ever sang about guidos, fistfighting Philadelphians, or heroin needles in the sand. Instead of a little douce coupe, it’s an uninsured shitbox he’s driving, “drop top down and we’re going to the Jersey Shore”. It’s a clever, if a bit hamfisted, inversion of their work, ending with a big Cream-y jam section. “Skimboard”, Danello, The Sad Surfer’s most popular song on streaming at the moment, is a bright pop song with wild key changes and thick harmonies about drowning at sea. One could almost imagine the protagonist of “Jersey Shore” deliberately ignoring the guy from “Skimboard” as he’s sucked out by the riptide. The main riff reminds me a bit of “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here” mixed with “Wave Goodnight To Me”. It has a wild turn at the end with a big Disney chorus and an almost Tchaikovsky-like ending section.
Nicholas II is probably my least favorite song on the record with its droning, Scottish folk song verses, but I like the choruses and when it picks up in the second half. The album ends with a bit of a left-field choice as well, as Dan resurrects the slowcore bridge theme from Outlaw as a neo-Romantic solo piano piece. It’s a light and sweet ending to Danello, the Sad Surfer’s brightest, most diverse, and most hopeful record yet. I also think it does a good job of showcasing the thing that is most captivating and frustrating about Dan Taggart’s songwriting: he will follow his muse anywhere. If there’s any Weezer album in particular that Danello is drawing from here with the wild genre swings and devil-may-care attitude, it’s the Red Album.
After having two hidden tracks on his first LP and skipping them on his second LP, Danello, The Sad Surfer have graced us with three hidden tracks this time around. They all appear to be Dan solo songs and all make heavy use of the Bass VI, a bright six-stringed bass which sounds more like a Stratocaster tuned an octave down than it does a traditional bass guitar. He plays big chord arpeggios on “Driving in the Snow”, and focuses on cool, airy choral harmonies on the shorter ones “Danello Hymn” and “Lullabye”. Befitting an unsigned local artist, the album art is clean, with no barcode or extraneous info. The cover is a cool Inkstation-watercolor piece of crashing waves against mountains, with the band name in a wiggly 60s block. On the inside, Wildwood at night. It does a good job of thematically matching the record itself - bright and surfy on the outside, but darker when you take a closer look at it. The only thing I might have changed if I were the designer would be to swap the back of the interior booklet to match the waves on the inside of the jewel case rather than the flag on the back of the jewel case.
This is a corny record, but it’s sweet, sweet Jersey corn. If you like music with a sense of humor that plays with the rock-and-roll tradition and you can get past the boogie riffs and the weird phrasing, this album is a unique, bright, and fun addition to your CD collection.