Kevin Bronson on July 14th, 2022

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Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon all make appearances in Surf Curse’s delightfully campy video for the new single “TVI.” And so do the members of the L.A. quartet, who have become monsters themselves.

Fresh off a Coachella appearance during which the band dressed as characters from “Wizard of Oz,” the quartet — co-founders Nick Rattigan and Jacob Rubeck, with new recruits Noah Kohll and Henry Dillon — today announced the Sept. 16 arrival of their new album, “Magic Hour.” It’s their first for Atlantic Records, which glommed on to the indie warriors after their single “Freaks” went viral in 2020.

Fitting neatly into their three-album, one-EP catalog that hopscotches irreverently between indie-, punk- and classic rock, “TVI” is a frenetic jam that even name-checks Rattigan’s solo project, Current Joys, in the lyrics. “‘TVI’ is an anthem about trying to stay out of trouble, whatever your trouble might be,” he says. “The chorus chants, ‘Take your time / free your mind / I can do this every day,’ as the mantra, but by ‘10 o’clock / TVI / give me mine take me away,’ you’ve succumbed…the ultimate loss of self and control … letting go.”

The song, the follow-up to “Sugar” (which appears on the album), was produced by Chris Coady and like the rest of “Magic Hour” made at New York’s Electric Lady Studios. The “TVI” video was directed by Rattigan and Rubeck and filmed on VHS by Max Knight at a supposedly haunted castle in the hills of L.A.

“‘Magic Hour’ is our excitement about rock music and being in a band,” Rubeck says. “This album is the excitement of starting something that we all can feel good about with each other, but also progressing as creative people and throwing in that magic. We’re feeling that magic, what’s brewing in the air and what’s existing in what we’re doing together.”

||| Watch: The video for “TVI”

||| Live: Both Surf Curse and Rattigan’s Current Joys have been added to the lineup for Primavera Sound, which goes off Sept. 16-18 at L.A. State Historic Park.

||| Previously: “Sugar,” live at the Fonda, “Disco”