BERMUDA WATERFALL, ARBUTUS RECORDS
5 A.M. The lazy morning drifts past under the hazy night sky now drifting into morning. It’s just me and Sean Nicholas Savage. Bermuda Waterfall plays softly in the background. The steady snap of the drum machine and whimsy. Every sound, every song, I feel like I know it.
It’s The Police. It’s Hall and Oates. It’s The Captain and Tennille. It’s sitting in the car in pitch darkness with my father, driving home in awkward silence as the AM radio plays just loud enough to hear it. But that’s not what Bermuda Waterfall is at all. It’s both overtly self-aware of itself and too ironic to care.
It’s anachronistic. It’s so uncool that it’s cool. It so readily embraces its influences that you can’t help but take it seriously. It is the least punk thing you will ever listen to. Even Mac DeMarco has more teeth than this. Really, his only contemporaries at this point are Air or Ariel Pink.
Ultimately though, Sean Nicholas Savage is just a guy trying to write pop songs that people can enjoy. Is the aesthetic original? Who cares? It’s like Led Zeppelin once said: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Or maybe that was Coalesce.
“But is it good?” I don’t know, bub. Why don’t you ask me again after I stop crying?
By Aaron J. Marko
