RAYON BEACH - This Looks Serious LP

Highly recommended.

Nicely priced.

The swirling cloud of deranged noise emanating from the highly radioactive inner core of RAYON BEACH has once again reared its head up. After the inescapable fallout from their debut Memory Teeth 12" EP in 2010, they have rightfully emerged with their first proper full-length LP, dragging the trembling scraps of electronic punk slime through a kaleidoscopic garbage can and out into the light, where they can cook properly in the blinding Texas sun.

But whereas on their first record the band was still carving out their slithering sound, melting from one mellifluous life form into another over the course of those first six treacherous tracks, here they’ve found their footing on their first LP, clenching a roughly pristine throb and riding it out into a sizzling pinnacle of modern punk precision.

Austin trio Rayon Beach (and arguably a whole slew of the city’s groups) has yet to succumb to Wavves-itis, instead embracing a purity and fuck-all attitude that evolves the lo-fi pop, garage-as-temple devotion and execution into a realm Williams missed. That the band doesn’t take its “art” too seriously is the first impression one gets from the cover of This Looks Serious. It’s a scene from a “very special episode” of Family Ties (the one where Michael J. Fox becomes hooked on amphetamine) that screams Rayon Beach is a bunch of goofs. Theirs is an energy that elicits absolute fun in looking back. Mentioning contemporaries of Rayon Beach, back to the Ponys and onto Box Elders and Ganglians, is worthless. These days there’s so much in-the-red retread, it’s a chore sifting through it all. And even though it’s evident with the initial blast of “Some Fun Before We Die” that they’re trolling in the school of Troggs slog and other instances of caveman pop, you can hear the genuine glee in just trying to capture teenage abandon (“stealing beers from the CVS”) before the wobbling tape decays.