EP REVIEW: San Cisco - Beach

San Cisco is a teen four-piece from sunny Freemantle, Australia and Beach is the band’s third EP and acts as a teaser for their debut album. They are currently enjoying huge success in their native Oz having won copious awards this year including eight WAMI’s in the same night (Australia’s equivalent to the Brit Awards). They are signed to Australia’s prestigious label Albert Productions along with AC /DC and The Easy Beats and Columbia Records here in the UK.

Beach is made up of four tracks and acts as the ideal showcase for their fluidity in tone and sound.  Opener ‘Beach’ has been heavily praised by Radio One DJ Huw Stevens and named as his record of the week. The track is low-fi indie pop charged with emotion and a twee innocence that is hard to fault. The vocals sounding childlike and pure whilst twinkling harmonies glide on in the background.

‘Golden Revolver’, which featured on their debut EP of the same name is a more up- tempo poppy track.  Singer Jordi’s vocals are charming and raw and the track is soaring indie pop at its finest. Their Idyllic back-story and evolution only adds to their allure having all met at high school in Perth whilst playing in an assortment of school bands. ‘Reckless’ is a more serious and saddening song with acoustic qualities. It goes, “Reckless is fun when you’re not the one that gets hurt.”

‘Lover’ the EP’s final track has hints of Vampire Weekends’ jauntiness and The Maccabees’ jangling. With its ‘ooh la’s’ and galloping verses, it’s very dance floor friendly. Their debut is set for release early next year, and it would be a fair prediction to say that it’s going to be big as they have repeatedly been tipped as ones to watch for 2013 by the critics. The compelling quality about this band is that they (seemingly) have free reign to do what they want. It all has a very organic feel and not for a second would one expect there to be some suit holding the puppet strings like so many other young artists.

Flume, Van She and Tame Impala are just some of this year’s best and most exciting Australian exports, and we can now add San Cisco to that list. It seems our ears have truly ripened to the isolated sounds of Australian pop and that this sound is quenching our thirst for something, well a little happier.