SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: DEAR BOY – CELEBRATOR

DEAR BOY
CELEBRATOR
LAST GANG RECORDS

Time holds music like a retractable collar holds a dog, free to roam, but not too far before you get pulled back in. Trend cycles come in waves, as modern musicians and producers are constantly finding ways to pull listeners back into the past with the niches of their predecessors. We are currently seeing this phenomenon with the ‘80s revival happening in pop music—it’s completely unavoidable.  However, indie and alternative rock spaces have started to grave-rob the remains of the ‘90s, and listeners are noticing. Los Angeles-based quartet Dear Boy and their sophomore album Celebrator have ripped a portal between the now and 1997, with an album that is definitely going to scratch an itch that millennials didn’t even realise was there.

Celebrator has done a truly remarkable job at encompassing what it was trying to do, an honest homage to the awkward chasm of 90s combination pop-rock. If it weren’t for some modern production elements sneaking through the tracks, Dear Boy could have fooled me into thinking that Celebrator is three decades old lost media.

Celebrator offers nothing we haven’t heard before, and it isn’t necessarily mind-blowing either, but I would be a fool to deny that Dear Boy didn’t hit the nail on the head with nearly all sonic aspects of the album.

The album is constantly thematic with airy vocals that seem perpetually conflicted and guitar riffs that sound as if they have been ripped right out of Weezer’s B-sides and Rarities. This genre of music sits in an uncomfortable void of genre ambiguity and inoffensiveness, nobody’s dying to turn it off but nobody’s dying to hear it either. Uncomfortably nesting itself right on the line of pop and rock—too rock for the poptimists, too pop for the rockists. Celebrator has pulled me into the void with it, and like the music, I feel like my review of the album is neither positive nor negative, it’s just here.

The 10-track album has some shining moments where the listener can hear a seamless blend of ‘90s Britpop and quintessential LA alternative. Songs such as “Now More Than Ever,” Wanderlow,” and “The Address” are where the band’s creative skills have come together without overpowering each other, creating the three songs on the album that bottle all the great elements of Celebrator. Titular track “Celebrator” stands out on the album as having the most Britpop elements within its production, whereas album closer “Daylight Savings” is overdrive-heavy, pedal-pushing, and quintessentially shoegaze within its instrumental. These are the nuances within Celebrator that have made the album momentarily engaging.

All in all, Celebrator is niche and once the novelty of the theme wears off, the album starts to taste bland. While it is not a groundbreaking album by any means, one cannot deny that the quartet have done a sublime job at reheating ‘90s leftovers. Hopefully Dear Boy will commit to creating something more original in the future, leftovers are great, but everyone loves a new recipe.

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