Surfaces

One Liner: Feel good pop heavy on steel drum and with that Sunday Best song.

Wikipedia Genre: Soul, pop, reggae, jazz, calypso

Home: College Station, Texas (whaaa?!?!)

Poster Position: Line 7
Both Weekends.

Saturday at 2:20 on the Honda Stage

Thoughts: Oh, wait!  I know these guys!  I had no clue that this group was called Surfaces, but my middle kid came home from camp one year and played "Sunday Best" no less than 38 times an hour.  She still jams it here and there.  It is a purely wonderful song.  And it looks like the rest of the world agrees, as the track has 650 MILLION streams!  That is wild.

Also, I had no clue this was two fratty-looking white dudes.  I 100% thought this was a Chance the Rapper looking dude.  Instead, those two guys look like cute, furry puppies wagging their tails furiously as they try to coax a treat from their owner.  Love it.  

Now the rest of their stuff?  Not quite up to the same level.  Kind of a island vibe, 311-making-pop sort of thing.  "24 / 7/ 365" straight up bites "The Girl from Ipanema" for a breezy beach track. (and is their second most streamed with 65.3 million streams).  "Wave of You" makes me think of the bad country songs on the radio right now that sound like they might be R&B, but because their sung by a country artist (and probably involve lyrics about trucks and red dirt and cold beer), people consider them country.  I don't like that one at all.  The back end of "Heaven Falls/ Fall on Me" is heavy on the steel drum, and "Good Day" uses it as well (while also kind of interpolating "Girl from Ipanema" again?  They love that song!).  Those songs are pretty alright.

They have a track with Elton John!  Really?  That is a totally unexpected collaboration, and fascinatingly, "Learn to Fly" isn't even in their top five streaming tracks despite the presence of Sir Elton.  I'm guessing the kids don't even know who he is, so they aren't all that impressed.  Honestly, its also not a great track.

And now reading up on them - an Aggie and a Baylor Bear walk into a reggae bar.  Literally, one of these guys was an Aggie, who uploaded some solo music online, and the other guy, a recent Baylor graduate, found his music and hit him up to collaborate.  Kind of crazy, but now that I look at that video again, I would absolutely peg those two dudes as guys who went to Baylor and thought it would be fun to make music that sounded vaguely reggae-ish.

Three albums - 2017's Surf, 2019's Where the Light Is, and 2020's Horizons.  Their most recent single is one called "Next Thing (Loverboy)."

Not great.  Also, why did he break out a video camera in that video?  It looked like they just met when she came to buy some succulents, and then suddenly the nursery worker has a huge camera and is filming her tucking her hair behind her ears?  What are we doing?  Don't care for that song much at all.

You know, I don't see myself going out of my way to go to this show, despite the fact that it would be fun to have a huge "Sunday Best" singalong.  But I'm probably good.