Atomicos - Fins Up!
Self-Released
Releases September 15th, 2023
In 1961 Dick Dale rented out the 3,000 capacity Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa California to play his signature guitar style. It’s a style that is characterized by a shrieking single coil tone run through a warm Fender amp, along with its distinct spring reverb pinned at ten. Dale, who was an avid surfer, also used middle eastern scales and violent vibrato picking to create what we now call surf rock. The idea behind it was to make the guitar sound as powerful as an ocean wave breaking up on the beach, no lyrics or singing required. Even to this day, those traditions of surf guitar are still the main tenets of the genre, and if you haven’t studied and practiced those standards, you simply cannot call yourself a surf rock band. In the case of Lethbridge outfit Atomicos, they have clearly studied, and are certainly practiced. When you come from a landlocked city in the prairies, what else is there to do but listen to surf music and daydream about the ocean?
Telling a story and taking listeners on a trip is hard at the best of times but when you take away the vocal element, you have to literally nail all other aspects of the music, there is no room to fail. In the case of Fins Up! It all seems to start with the songwriting. Very clever riffs and guitar melodies are carefully put together song by song. Each track has very distinctive and unique parts that separate the songs and gives them direction. Everything is placed perfectly and deliberately so as to keep the songs wrapped up in a nice package. At no point do things get experimental or too heavy on jamming. It retains a sense of comfort, much like a sunny day at the beach, despite the inherent danger of the ocean right in front of you.
The guitar tone on this album is exceptional and gives you everything the avid surf rock fan wants. It is delicate in its reverb soaked tone when playing leads, but in an instant breaks up into those overdriven, dive bomb chords that seem to sustain for days. When it comes to surf rock, bass and drums seem to work more in tandem than usual. The drums hold a steady groove and don’t go crazy trying to put in a bunch of unnecessary fills. They effectively use the standard surf rhythms with that signature double snare hit, without it being boring or grating to hear over and over. The bass holds it down with very sub range frequencies and simple bass lines. The guitar work covers such a large area of frequency that you need the bass to simply sit there with the drums and hold the groove. There is a very psychedelic quality to the bass providing most of that comfort on each track. Atomicos do play around with bass tone and add a bit of fuzz to it on tracks like “Rad Racer ll” that give the song a bit more speed and drive.
Overall, Fins Up! By the Atomicos is a true surf rock album. They have successfully checked all the boxes. You won’t hear any lyrics about California girls or partying or other nonsense. What you get instead is an album that can transport you from the misery of a cold Canadian prairie, onto a surfboard riding a barrel, and just getting pitted.
- Nigel Young
