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Feb 14, 2022 By Austin Saalman

A relatively solid year in indie music, 2012 yielded such releases as Beach House’s Bloom, The xx’s Coexist, The Lumineers’ self-titled debut, and fun.’s Some Nights, as the scene, once the underground’s best kept secret, continued its progression toward a more mainstream sound and aesthetic appeal. While many purists, it can be assured, bemoaned this development, the majority of listeners found the evolution charming and accessible, sending some of the artists in question to the top of the charts. There remained, however, a glimmering sliver of absurdity, still alive and well on the movement’s outskirts, and few indie releases that year were as intriguing, perplexing, and comfortably at home in those esoteric boondocks as The Explorers Club’s luscious sophomore effort Grand Hotel.

Nearly four years prior, the South Carolinian retro pop outfit had proved itself an able Beach Boys tribute band with the release of their sunnily enchanting debut Freedom Wind. What initially set The Explorers Club apart from Coconut Records and other great oldies-inspired musical acts of the day was their propensity for a sound entirely of another place and time—in the case of Freedom Wind: Southern California, circa 1965. Even 14 years on, the album retains its astounding authenticity, offering few ties to the millennial era in which it was recorded. The subsequent Grand Hotel took the group’s formula a step further, keeping one foot firmly planted in the 1960s, while placing the other into a rosy fantasy realm of tangy Hanna-Barbera twilights and temperate summer breezes. Borrowing from the Herb Alpert-Burt Bacharach-Ray Conniff easy listening playbook, The Explorers Club swiftly reinvented themselves as a cross between calculated baroque pop maestros and lovelorn AM radio soft rockers, equipped with a fresh release of romantically intoxicating tunes.

Upon its Valentine’s Day 2012 release, Grand Hotel garnered positive critical reception, yet little external attention. Its niche scope of influence and lack of irony ensured its cult appeal, but whereas Freedom Wind had boasted favorite “Forever”—which found its way onto the Bored to Death and How I Met Your Mother soundtracks—and other stylishly unabashed Brian Wilson homages, Grand Hotel’s sound, especially in its far less rock-oriented second portion, is more reminiscent of Vietnam-era easy listening and session music, which may have been of less interest to modern audiences.

For indication of the album’s great debt to the aforementioned Alpert, look no further than its cover art, which borrows heavily from that of his 1965-released Whipped Cream and Other Delights. Like such musical giants, central Explorers Club member Jason Brewer is an extraordinarily adept pop music visionary, smoothly translating its complex compositional language into a warm and stimulating proclamation of sonic beauty.

Essentially existing in two conceptual halves, Grand Hotel’s brass-heavy first side mirrors the lively bombast of the mid-century leisure scene, providing a perfect soundtrack for suburban pool parties of the time, complete with fondue plates, bubble shades, and summer light. “Run, Run, Run” swings with the polished longing typical of the era’s West Coast pop sound, and “Anticipatin’” bounces with a funky, entirely convincing faux-gospel affect. Meanwhile, the heavily atmospheric “Bluebird” recalls early Carpenters hits. In paying tribute to Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, instrumental cuts “Acapulco (Sunrise)” and the album’s title track are rich with Latin-tinged horns and intricate arrangements, while the earnest “Go for You” echoes such dusky bedroom pining as felt by a ’60s high schooler who has recently discovered Odessey and Oracle. The subsequent “Any Little Way,” the album’s trippy third instrumental, fades into notable ballad “It’s No Use,” which serves as the partition between the upbeat Side A and largely mellow, string-laden Side B—without question Grand Hotel’s most fascinating half.

The floral wash of evening light found on the sentimental ballad “Sweet Delights” renders it a splendid nostalgia trip, and “It’s You” is, simply said, a rich slice of fat blue cheesecake, as is much of Grand Hotel. The former is beguiling in its youthful frolic, channeling, at least to some extent, the likes of The Association. The latter is a glossily flavorful return to the group’s Beach Boys roots, standing as a remarkable example of just how pure and pristine modern pop can be. The Southern California musical masters are also recalled in the title “Summer Days, Summer Nights,” which, it can be argued, is Grand Hotel’s finest cut, and the culmination of The Explorers Club’s creative intentions up to that point. The penultimate “Weight of the World” continues in this vein, its dreamy vision as moving as its predecessor’s, and the concluding “Open the Door,” which sees the group doing its finest collective Glen Campbell impression, fittingly closes the album.

While not its strongest, most cohesive effort (that would be 2016’s back-to-the-basics Together, which features solid performances from members of Brian Wilson’s backing band), The Explorers Club most certainly managed to craft an astounding, albeit subtle, moment in indie pop on Grand Hotel. The lack of listener enthusiasm can be attributed to any number of things, from high expectations stemming from the acclaimed Freedom Wind to the group’s decision not to push any musical boundaries on its follow-up, settling instead for what may be compared to a comfortable summer afternoon outing or an evening cruise down a deserted waterside road with the radio on. Any which way, what Grand Hotel lacks in innovation, it more than compensates for in atmosphere, which the group and producer/mixing engineer Mark Linett—better known for his phenomenal work on such Beach Boys reissues as Pet Sounds—layer on in bulk throughout. Slight flaws aside, The Explorers Club’s second album remains a key entry within the early-’10s indie canon and showcases the exquisite beauty of which the creative mind is capable—those vivid memories of an idealized distant past that, more than likely, never really was.

www.theexplorersclub.com

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