Floridian rockers Surfer Blood’s name has come to be associated with trouble and tragedy. John Paul Pitts’ arrest for domestic violence in 2012, after which he accepted a “plea and pass” deal, triggered a backlash. Then last year their guitarist Thomas Fekete died of cancer at just 27. (During his illness, Kickstarter funds raised to help with his treatment were stolen from the band’s van.) Their fourth album is a tribute to Fekete, and it is propelled by urgency rather than anger: Six Flags in F or G references the “parasitic grief” the group faced following their loss, determined in its surf-rock swagger, and elsewhere there is sunny, scrappy guitar-pop mixed with Generation X anxiety. It’s a bright but unremarkable return, perhaps best represented by the opening track, Matter of Time, which is filled with a desire to seek salvation from their music: “In a world so full of murky intentions,” Pitts sings, “we’ll make ourselves a home.”
