Formal Socks - ‘Beach House’ Review: A colourful indie-pop debut
The debut single from a new indie-pop group on the scene, Formal Socks. Colourful, joyful and optimistic – it deserves a spot in your summer playlists, ready to soundtrack your road trips.
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Credit: Formal Socks 📸
Formal Socks is a new bedroom pop group that has just arrived on the scene, premiering their debut single Beach House.
Beach House is a straightforward indie hip-hop track about youth, summer and embracing the moment. It sounds colourful, joyful and has an element of optimism throughout.
It feels like a road trip; imagine driving, windows down and the sun beating down on you. That’s where I feel mentally when this track comes on – a feeling of being young, care-free and happy. There’s something golden and uplifting about it, and to be honest, I can’t take it off repeat.
That sound or feeling isn’t completely new, taking immediately noticeable direction from Easy Life, Glass Animals, Arlo Parks and Steve Lacey, Formal Socks could easily join an already-saturated list of copycats following the formula that made these particular artists successful.
On the flip side, Beach House shows clear experimentation instrumentally and lyrically – which gives an indication that the group are trying to create a genre-fluid sound. From what we’ve heard so far, it’s both blissful and bubbly.
The introduction of a distorted guitar to complement the finale of the song is a welcome addition, that adds a nice touch without cluttering the clean and simplistic sound.
Touching on the lyrics very briefly, a line that stuck out was ‘I’m seeing all the rain, and never changing the weather’ which could have several meanings, both literally and metaphorically. Sounding like a nod to an emotional state, it compares the inability to undo low feelings to an inability to change the weather.
The more you hear the line the cleverer it becomes, especially in the context of the song – where warm weather (ie. happiness) is an integral driver.
Love vibing to easy-listening indie hip-hop? This track is definitely for you. Beach House earns a worthy spot in your playlists this summer.
If you can’t play it on a road trip or as you daydream on a beach, then you’re doing something wrong.
Formal Socks – we’re excited about where your sound goes next. In the meantime, we’re going to get an ice cream, because we’re now manifesting the summer.
Now, it’s your turn. Give it a spin, and tell us what you think on Insta or X.
Rating: 6/10
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