Coromandelles
Late Bloomers’ Bloomers
PORCH PARTY/BURGER
7/10
The product of Tijuana Panthers bassist/singer Daniel Michicoff, Cold War Kids bassist Matt Maust, and The Shins drummer Joe Plummer, Coromandelles is an indie supergroup that’s joined forces to create “faux-French pop”—which, from the sounds of their debut album, is just delightfully trashy surf-punk intertwined with a lot of French lyrics and some Euro-pop elevator bell noises thrown in for good measure.
Bursting with ethereal harmonies and dripping with sun-kissed guitar riffs, Late Bloomers’ Bloomers is thirty-two minutes of fuzzy, wine-drunk jams that manages to be sophisticated, sleazy, raucous, and dreamy all at once. At its best, the album is cathartically carefree and, at its worst, it sounds like something you’ve already heard from Burger Records. But even though the record occasionally slips into the typical SoCal garage-rock clichés—hazy, effect-laden production and jangly guitar melodies—its unique Jean-Luc Godard aesthetic keeps it from feeling stale. Not to mention it’ll give you a chance to practice that high school French you’ve forgotten.
