Surf Curse arrive on stage upstairs at Worcester’s Palladium to a fully packed room, as well as Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ playing through the PA. It’s an unquestionably classic tune, but given its age, it’s somewhat of an odd choice considering that the crowd that wound around the block hours earlier is composed chiefly of people born post-2000. I myself had not quite realized the demographic makeup that would await, but it makes sense considering the level of success the band achieved when their track ‘Freaks’ took over the short-video streaming platform TikTok in 2020. TikTok and platforms like it, at their best, can be great engines of discovery for music, and the appeal of the band has not been confined to ‘Freaks’ and the 2015 album Buds from which it comes but has spread far into their discography and bolstered the reach of their latest, 2022’s Magic Hour.
Initially, the duo project of drummer/singer Nick Rattigan and guitarist/singer Jacob Rubeck, the band has grown to four in recent years, adding Henry Dillon on bass and Noah Kholl on an additional guitar. With this doubled lineup they’re well-equipped to channel the myriad influences that weave through their energetic art-punk songs, from a bit of the perhaps-expected surf rock stylings to slower, groovier, poppier tendencies – the latter explored even further on Magic Hour. The four play in a line onstage, Rattigan front and center, just a tactical allowance between band and crowd for the numerous crowd surfers who begin sailing through the air almost immediately. The kids were full tilt by the penultimate song of Momma’s opening set, and with tracks like ‘Arrow’ placed early on, there’s no chance of feet remaining on the floor.
‘Arrow’, like many of Rattigan’s tracks, is uncompromisingly introspective, a habit that continues unabated on Magic Hour. He uses some grisly imagery to display a series of scenes from a mind in distress; despite the band’s increased success, he’s clearly got layers of sedimentary anxiety and ennui through which to tunnel. Losing himself, “getting high on ego death” – a particularly good line, that one – and sending a metaphorical arrow into his own cranium; and that’s all inside a couple of verses in one song. Songs like ‘Christine F’ from Nothing Yet also played with equally self-destructive imagery years prior, and ‘Cronenberg’ is about what one might expect for a track named after the singularly bizarre director.
Rubeck-penned songs like the slower ‘Cathy’ and the frenetic-in-a-different-way ‘Midnight Cowboy’ lend the band an important element of variation that also helps pace the setlist, putting the band among the names of artists that have gained the benefit of having a pair of lyricists and singers in their roster. It’s easy to see how these two came to form a band together in their relative youth, and so much of their work has the quality of some sort of coming-of-age film, or perhaps films as they move between different genres. Rattigan’s autobiographical ‘TVI’ is a recent example, whereas ‘The Smell Saved My Life’ finds the band chronicling their youth on Buds. (The track is named not for a particular scent, but rather an LA venue that the band frequented in their nascence.)
“It’s like a Russian bathhouse in here,” quips Rattigan midway through the night, and he’s right. If there is a fog machine it’s been totally outclassed by the intense heat of the crowd meeting with the occasional influx of frigid air from outside the venue. A thick mist has enveloped the room, and everything is sweating: not just the people, there are condensation trails running down the walls all the way to the back of the room, and the lens of my camera fogs so frequently that I have to keep a cloth to hand and wipe it down every few photos. While the band probably could have gone a long way towards filling the larger downstairs room of the Palladium, this compact experience is inarguably how Surf Curse was meant to be experienced, perhaps even in the tradition of their shows at The Smell. Surf Curse have carried their energy from Buds all the way through to Magic Hour, and the final salvo of the night: ‘Freaks’ into the wonderfully-syncopated ‘Sugar’, into the closer of Nothing Yet’s best cut ‘Disco’; demonstrates this perfectly. Everyone who can seem to be trying to reach the front – some linger there and dance a bit before being hoisted back into the masses, and one particularly eager fan who’s been airborne nearly half a dozen times comes to the front and Rattigan wraps his arm around him – having been relieved on drums for the final song – and they sing a bit of ‘Disco’ together. Even beneath all that fog, it’s clear to see that this is nothing short of what a punk show ought to be.
