June Birthdays 
This current, pervasive usage of "surf/surfy" is problematic, an instance of shift of meaning that renders the term nothing more than shibboleth - a sign passed between hipsters that they are "with it". We may note that flat wound strings are coming back into vogue as "surf/garage influence" becomes requisite among hipster guitarists who use fuzz and spring reverb to produce sounds that work with their mostly vocal arrangements.
But that is just describing what we don't mean by the term. To me, surf music has to have a certain bravado, even a macho guitar technique. It requires a guitar that accommodates a hard downstroke tremolo picking technique. Without guitar attack, there is no surf. Which is why hipster bands are misappropriating the term, since they never, ever have strong guitar players.
And let's not leave out the drums! Surf drumming has much more in common with the styles of jazz and big band than rock since the mid60s. It's rooted in a mid XX c feel for rhythm irrespective of more recent trends in dance music.
I think the spirit of surf music remains rooted in a primitive exuberance typical of midXX c modernism. It has SoCal beaches and dancehalls in its DNA, and the imprint of the founding generation persists.
Tuck wrote:*
—JakeDobner wrote:
Yeah, I personally consider the Beach Boys a surf band. I'm really just ruling out bands nowdays being surf and having a lot of vocals.
Exactly. Modern pop bands called "surfy" are seldom anything like surf. It's a perverse and awkward shift in meaning of the term that has to be watched out for constantly. Too late to do anything about it, but let's not fall over it. It's not so much the vocals that are wrong in that stuff as everything else. And yet ... I prefer no singing. It kind of gets in the way of the guitar.
