I feel like I've mentioned in past Gremmys something along the lines of "There weren't a lot of big releases this year" which had me wondering "What is a big release?". I mean, this is surf music, even Los Straitjackets are far from a household name. But this does feel like a big release year, with big releases from Les Agamemmnonz, Pollo Del Mar, Arno de Cea & the Clockwork Wizards, Surfer Joe, and of course these guys. They've hardly been dormant, with two LPs and two singles in the 2010s and I've managed to see them twice, but one LP was a live record and the other was covers (albeit most of them obscure enough to feel like originals). You Can't Handle the Tremolo Beer Gut is their first LP of originals since 2008.

Though they've been dropping a few nice singles here and there, it's been 15 years since we've had an LP from the Space Agency, and they remain as special as ever. Somewhere underneath layers of fuzz and pedals is a pretty trad surf group with great dead-simple melodies that honestly could sound more 1962 than many groups if they felt like it. Give a listen to the least dressed song on this record "Alpaca Boogie" to catch a glimpse.

In the past few years surf has finally being sneaking in nods to another nostalgic form of instrumentals: video game themes.

The title "Poolside with" may seem somewhat generic, but it's actually a bit of a clue. The Bluebottles aren't out to capture the adrenaline rush of a monster wave, it's a lighthearted album full of party music. Even though opening track, though lively, features an acoustic guitar lead, aiming to greet with an active dance floor rather than an overwhelming salvo.

The fourth LP from Coffin Daggers is perhaps a bigger turn than having a google-eyed bongo-playing demon on the cover: it's a cover record! Of eleki tunes! For those unacquainted, Eleki is a Japanese instrumental rock & roll music, highly Ventures influenced, typically with very sharp, staccato guitar tones. Admittedly, Eleki is a bit of a weak point in my instro knowledge -- I always kind of hoped I'd go to Japan and blindly buy anything that vaguely fit the bill and learn from there -- but generally good starting points are Takeshi Terauchi and Yuzo Kayama.

Chewbacca’s have released two great Astro-Man styled records back in 2002, resurfaced with a great split LP with Espectroplasma in 2012, and that’s it until now with this full LP on Sharawaji Records.

Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited would be one of the best at their genre if they didn’t feel like their own genre. If each LPs sounds similar to the last, I believe that’s OK because nobody else sounds like them and that sound has been pretty tightly designed since LP1.

Every Durango14 album has built significantly on the last one, and while 2016’s Vol. 3 was very close, I believe this is the album they were striving to make.

The initial few EPs from Les Robots were immediately exciting: they were bar-none the best modern Joe Meek sound-alike that I'd heard. Thankfully, they didn't keep us waiting for long to hear a full-length, and I think it delivers on the promise of those EPs.

Recently the surf radio show Heads Up! with Carmen Ghia put on a monster 11-band showcase of Seattle's surf/instro groups. On that roster was a band called Via Combusta, who have been playing Seattle surf shows for a while but seem largely unknown outside their home turf (and was certainly unknown to me). This 7" was slated for a release this fall, but waddaya know, they were ready to go earlier than expected, which is seemingly never the case these days. I think they deserve a little attention.