Written By: Skyler Warren

A comfortable, calming feeling can be achieved while sitting at the beach at night and watching the moon reflect off the waves. San Francisco’s Void Boys capture that feeling in their recent release, Starfish Single.

A mix of pop-punk, surf-rock and a little grunge are heard throughout the two track single released on March 14th through Pretty Penny Records. Coming out of San Francisco, the sound is refreshing because it doesn’t stick to the weird, noisy, pseudo-psychedelic garage-rock that the city’s music community has become known for in the last decade. Instead, Void Boys reaches back to a different part of the early 2000s, the more alternative rock side. Linear song structure and a dynamic that is easy to follow for the listener takes control of the album. Each part of each song allows enough time for foot tapping. Their songs are catchy and well structured, while not coming off as too jumpy.

The title track, Starfish shows the band’s ability to construct a truly dynamic song. The whole band comes in together, creating the often used cliche, “wall of sound”. The distorted guitar and bass, paired with driving drums are a complimentary backing to the male and female vocal harmonies that create a rather soothing feeling about the song.

Looking Down brings up memories of early Wavves tracks. Sounding more pop-punk than surf, the song feels romantic enough to tug at heart strings and fun enough to dance to. The song begins with drums and a distorted guitar, allowing time for the listener to get into a groove before the rest of the band comes in. Nothing fancy, just three chords, but let’s remember; sometimes simple is best. The vocals switch between a male and female lead with a nice mix of harmonies that are soothing among the driving instrumentals.

Two songs and less than seven minutes isn’t much time to persuade listeners to, well, listen. Void Boys takes advantage of the little time that a single allows them, and the two tracks flow seamlessly, complimenting each other enough to justify having paired them together on the album, but showing enough of a dynamic to share what the band has to offer when their full length record comes out.