Localized Candy Claws

Just some kids from Fort Collins, Candy Claws have done something extraordinary with their first full-length. Designed to be a companion to Rachel Carson’s book The Sea Around Us, In The Dream Of The Sea Life is fantastically dense. Feeding layers of sound through numerous effects and musical minds, the band creates something beautiful and almost entirely new. Deciphering it on the first listen is like listening to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless for the first time.

Sea Life begins with a full minute of faint underwater sounds (perhaps a trick to entice the listener into turning up the volume) that give way to gliding guitars and effected cymbals. The rest of the album follows that dreamy path, with shimmering—and occasionally percussive—guitars, droning bass hums, and strange waves of tuneful noise. Field recordings of crashing waves captured by the band in Italy and the Philippines also lurk within the layers. Although that may seem a little on the nose, Candy Claws aren't about subtlety, continually reinforcing the album's aquatic theme with its song titles and lyrics. 

The percussion and claps on “Snowflake Eel Wish” sound like rain on the ocean, and “Lantern Fish” floods like a tropical storm. “Catamaran” glows with music-box-via-Nintendo guitars and sleighbell shakes, galloping along the beach while vocalist Ryan Hover sings about crashing waves and sunlight. “Flashy Storm” casts a net of purring shoegaze distortion over what sounds like a lost pop song from the ’50s.

In The Dream Of The Sea Life is at its brightest and most triumphant with “The Sun Is My Girl,” an ultra-catchy tune with an impossibly optimistic chorus. Here, the band’s disparate influences are most apparent, showing traces of The Beach Boys, The Microphones, Japanese pop, American folk, and even Ace Of Base. Hover chants the song’s title over a layer of tropical "oohs," and a lilting, start-stop rhythm allows the song to fade and bloom repeatedly. Candy Claws have created something hyperactively beautiful, joyful, and childlike here—but also something equally and masterfully composed. In The Dream Of Sea Life is music made for marveling. Grade: A