I have to be honest here. A band named after a professional wrestler, no matter what they sound like, is going to tug at my heart strings in a way that’s totally unfair to all bands that are not named after professional wrestlers. I also love summer, summer jams, and any jams that evoke some sort of summer-ness. And with that we have Athen, GA’s Koko Beware and their full-length debut, Something About Summer.
Koko Beware play the type of surf-y, garage-y poppy music you expect to hear when you walk into a boardwalk coffee shop, where the women behind the counter is wearing horn-rimmed glasses or a polka-dot bandanna, or, quite possibly, both. You take your tuna sandwich and medium roast to a window seat, where you watch the waves roll in and get completely lost in the adorable sounds soothing into your subconscious – a sugary twee twang spun by the bastard offspring of Billy Childish and Holly Golightly if they were abandoned at the same orphanage as Jay Reatard and The Vivian Girls.
The album is ripe with catchy hooks and delightfully simple lyrics. Take the female-to-male vocal trade-off approach on “Beach Babe” for example. She: “I see you lying in the sand – and I want you to be my man.” He: “You are so fine that I wanna make you mine but I just don’t have the patience – I aint got the time.” Similarly the bouncy upbeat tempo and straightforward chorus of “I Just Wanna Dance” will have your BBQ party mini-pogoing around the grill and singing along, “I just wanna dance – daaaaance with you!” Don’t feel bad if someone spills a little bit of daiquiri on your shirt – it's summer!
No other song on the record sums up the feeling of summer and all the hazy, aloof carefreeness that comes along with it than the ode to drunken one-night-stands gone right, “Stay.” With her best girl-group foot forward, singer Ashley Plocha croons,“I don’t know you but you’re lying in my bed/It’s 2:30 and I can’t remember how we met…You may be a liar but right now you seem like an okay guy/Stay a little bit – stay a little bit longer/’Cause I have nothing to do tomorrow.” Yeah, there’s something about summer alright. Now pass me the lemonade and rum, please.
