Video: Poolside, ‘Around the Sun’

Kevin Bronson on February 8th, 2020

1

Summer is still a few months away, but L.A. pop whiz Poolside has already made the album for it. And of course we know how impossibly clichéd that sounds, but it takes but only one spin to sway and be swayed. “Low Season,” produced entirely by Jeffrey Paradise, is the first Poolside record since the 2017 departure of co-founder Filip Nikolic.

Poolside’s self-coined genre appellation “daytime disco” still applies, but “Low Season” feels less digitized than anything they’ve done, and broader in scope as well. Credit Paradise for his gang’s-all-here approach to recording the album. Members of his live lineup joined in, including the Rapture’s Vito Roccoforte and Mattie Safer, Brijean Murphy (Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls) and Casey Butler (Pharaohs). Collaborators on individual tracks included Ben Browning of Cut Copy, Amo Amo and Panama (aka Australia’s Jarrah McCleary).

It’s Butler’s seductive saxophone that gets the album off to an oozing start with “Abandoned Tunnel” — in fact, “Low Season” is bookended by two ambient tracks. Closer “Sunrise Strategies” just might be that dream you have between when your alarm goes off and when you actually awake. And the vintage Poolside — something that suggests the Bee Gees trying to take an afternoon off and still being struck by creative lightning — shines through the irresistible “Around the Sun” (which features Amo Amo) and “Can’t Stop Your Lovin’.”

For his part, Paradise says the album “is sonically and lyrically akin to traveling to someplace tropical then finding the beaches empty and the weather uncertain — you venture down unexpected paths, discovering people and places on your journey that surprise you and provide you with a new perspective on life.”

He might have something there … if you can find a way to get the sand out of your clothes.

“Low Season,” which came out Friday, arrives as Poolside embarks on a month-long European tour, which will be followed by U.S. dates in April and May (no L.A. shows are currently on their slate).

||| Watch: The video for “Around the Sun”