The Donkeys - Living on the Other Side (CD)

The Donkeys are more than simply four California beach bums who love to surf, drink beer, and jam as the sun sets over the Pacific. If their back story contains those top-down cars and suntanned utopian surf tableaus, it also contains the malaise and the escape fantasies familiar to all suburban kids of the 80s and 90s. Miraculously, the music manages to communicate both moods at once. Any expression of existential ennui - "is this all there is?" - is soothed by an unrushed guitar lick and a harmonized twang that becomes almost meditative. This record is about rolling down the windows, cranking up the stereo, and hitting the open road.