The Steamboat Pilot & Today

The Explorers Club

Steamboat Springs — “Freedom Wind”

You could say The Explorers Club is ripping off the retro resurgence, or that its songs are about as derivative as you can get without just going ahead and covering the Beach Boys.

And that would be true — but it also would be shortchanging a band that does this so well — and so honestly — that it doesn’t really matter if it’s original.

On “Freedom Wind,” the Charleston, S.C., sextet offers a collection of twelve tracks that has the harmonic intricacy of an overstocked a cappella group and the lyrical complexity of a children’s book. The guys in The Explorers Club are not interested in making their listeners think. Neither was Brian Wilson. The focus here, and with any other carefree summer release, is putting out music that’s breezy. Jason Brewer fronts that effort with a honey voice and careful arrangement.

Tracks like “Forever,” “Do You Love Me?” and “Hold Me Tight” are so simple, so lush, that first time Explorers will swear they’ve heard them before, which they kind of have. Brewer’s songwriting is classic through and through, even if it’s not as inventive as other recent takes on beach rock, most notably Panda Bear’s “Person Pitch.”

“Freedom Wind” is being promoted as the “soundtrack for the summer of 2008” by Dead Oceans, an independent label that has picked up The Explorers Club along with a short list of emergent rock and folk acts, including Phosphorescent and Bowerbirds. Of course, they’re trying to get people to buy records, but the Dead Oceans assessment of “Freedom Wind” is an accurate one — this thing could stay on repeat all summer in just about any car CD player.

The Explorers Club stops through Lion’s Lair Lounge in Denver on June 24.

Rating: ★★★★