Dante Elephante’s German Aquatics

Good records don’t just evoke a time and a place; they embody it. On German Aquatics, Santa Barbara pop rockers Dante Elephante beautifully capture that youthful beach-bound feel with a collection of up-tempo surf rock that’s prime for summertime road-tripping. Taking cues from their guitar-toting contemporaries (we get hints of Surfer Blood, Best Coast, and Beach Fossils), the band sweetly melds meandering chords with simple, catchy hooks and fat, quick-paced drum work. Lyrically, German Aquatics is filled with punchy little vignettes about relationship woes and youthful reminiscing, each padded with its fair share of sonic nostalgia. As Dante Elephante’s figurehead, frontman Ruben Zarate calls to mind the high-registered vocalists who have dominated the genre since Rivers Cuomo’s heyday. Better still, his sweet and earnest deliveries help tie German Aquatics to its predecessors even as it reminds us of the S.B. coast, dateline now. For more, visit danteelephante.bandcamp.com.