U.K.’s Deaf Surf Deliver Biting Post-Punk Melody On Engaging Debut Single

On “Sofa,” their debut single, the Brighton, U.K.-based Deaf Surf feel like with their piercing post-punk melodies, they cut right through the hazy fog of modern life’s greatest grandiosity for a cathartic spotlight on the moments when, as the lyrics proclaim, you’re sitting on your sofa and missing out on what the rest of life has to offer. What should actually fill life’s moments is an open-ended question; “Sofa,” meanwhile, feels like it’s focused on confronting the malaise.

The group sounds like they’re funneling the angst of the most engaging classic punk through more drawn out, sprawling melodies, which allows the emotional nuance to really shine. On “Sofa,” that nuance consists of an anxious edge, buoyed by the spiraling, almost carefree riffing that bobs along. After an opener featuring jagged performances cruising in unison, the band get into more upbeat, energetically forward playing in which the guitar and drum bursts feel like they’re poignantly amplifying the increasing emotional strain in the richly dynamic singing.

The song gradually proves increasingly confrontational, as the lyrics progress through the speaker’s demands for a certain someone to tell them about their world travels, their trip to a music festival, and — eventually — their wedding. The speaker talks about the “adventure from my sofa” that they have via the retellings, but the snarl in their voice and in the guitars alongside them ensures that the real sentiment here emerges. Hints of a kind of nihilistic feeling of letting loose hang in the shadows of the rather anxious melodies that the band perform with their increasingly thick ferocity.

5/5 Stars

Check out the song below! Deaf Surf have been together since March 2019, and based on this catchy song, great developments await on their horizon.