The Shore

With the release of Brian Wilson’s SMiLE and the barrage of sunny minded bands like the Thrills bringing forth a piece of “California Dreaming" anthems, it seems only fitting for another band to take a stab at the Golden State. Although The Thrills’ European home shares more in common with the French Riviera than Laguna Beach, enter The Shore, who can actually call the states home. Marching in shades of The Beatles, Oasis and Coldplay, The Shore build big orchestrated rock with kaleidoscope guitars and lush choruses on their self-titled debut.

The Shore sound like their namesake on the opener “Hard Round,”a dreamy wave-crashing opus with a “Champagne Supernova” tilt. Songs like “Waiting For The Sun” move down a dreamy pasture of orchestrated lush that will have DJ’s squeezing The Shore into their play-list. When lyricst Ben Ashley’s sings of “I’ve been losing these days/can’t feel you no more/ I’ve been lost in a haze, got my head on the floor,” the band pulls off an aroma of psychedelic pop rock that works and is sometimes stunning.

However, this ambitious debut would be better off as an EP. The Shore build on identical themes and by the second half of the CD it appears Ashley has run out of tricks...and by track nine, you wonder if the CD has been stuck on repeat. In the end, you feel as if you’ve just snoozed through The Endless Summer. Good thing this debut is only ten tracks long or you’d forget that The Shore started out brilliantly and then it just slowly faded away.