The Break – Cylinders [single]

Written by Amy Robinson

This is how you create awesome: be in a huge band that gets massive kudos, and with some bros from that band, meet up with a dude from another band of similar stature when you’re all middle aged, wear tiki shirts and make surf rock. Lost? Don’t be. Rob Hirst, Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey of Midnight Oil got jammin’ with the Violent Femmes’ Brian Ritchie to make the surf rock band, The Break. Tiki shirts may or may not be involved.

I got listening to their single ‘Cylinders’ and it just had vibes of rad all through, in and over it. Think The Ventures, but with more hair on their chests. It has that surfed up bass line, but with so much thump in it, it could wind you. The guitars play with the bass to get that eerie surf sound, like if Scooby Doo and the gang were trying to solve a mystery on the beach using their boards and at some point had to punch a shark in the eye.

A crazy high synth comes in at what I would call the ‘chorus’ (it’s instrumental), which on first listen sounds incongruous in the whole ‘but surf music is meant to be organic’ way. But you know what I think? Fuck organics. Said synth adds a whole new dimension to the song, and made me understand what The Break meant by ‘Expect the unexpected’ for their upcoming album Church of the Open Sky. The synth cameos throughout the rest of the song, even rubbing coconut oil on you with the guitar as the bass drops out and quits giving you an upper cut for a few seconds, while the drums just keep the party happening.

The only way this could get better was if tiki shirts were involved and someone handed me one of those cocktails still in the coconut. Winners are grinners.

10/10