Every year around this time (today!) I spend three days in the desert. I’ve been doing this for almost 25 years now thanks to a family timeshare at a historic tennis club left to us by my late firecracker of a gramma Shirley. I use the opportunity to dry my salted cod of a body out while roasting poolside and blasting the latest and greatest in my headphones and reading whatever dreary, dark, overindulged author I fancy of the moment (this one will hit the spot this weekend) and try not to think about surfing. I call it a vacation from my surf lifestyle and it’s an important part of a balanced surf life. Reset by removal. During the drive out and subsequent musical-induced daydream I got to thinking about a surf ritual that’s often overlooked: the drive to the beach.

Every time I leave the house to surf, I load up: board, wettie, towel, bar of wax and drive off. And that’s when things get important. What will I listen to? It is sometimes the most crucial part of the surf and will dictate the style of surfing I do, my approach, attitude in the lineup and overall mood for the remainder of the day. The songs I choose are important and the drive aint that long, so I gotta get it right.

Often my choices are nostalgia influenced. Old surf movies, punk bands or guilty pleasures are what fill the cockpit. But lately I’ve been feeling like I don’t have a band of right now that does it for me and it makes me feel out of touch. I can only put on At the Drive-In so many times to get psyched— and that keeps me surfing like an angsty 17-year-old so I need to grow up. This week however, the world was graced by new tunes (and thank God an album next week) by a band called Memo PST who we consider family— our own Jackson Todd does the drumming and we’re all a little fond of Ex-Cult (singer Chris Shaw’s former band). Not to mention they played the first ever Inherent Bummer Live show.

Now it’s one thing to get some cool new tunes, but the three songs they have released so far (remember debut album next week) have something special infused in them. They are songs that make you glad you have an outlet for the way they make you feel i.e. they make you happy you surf. They make you feel like you rip. They aren’t so heavy that you need to lift weights or punch something, but hey aren’t light psych or garage like so many of the bands of right now. They simply make you wanna put your tail through the lip or lean into your bottom turn. It’s punk rock but done with just enough ode to the past and just enough right now to please everyone from age 13-55 — and I know based on the how many of my friends in those age ranges hit me up this week about our posts on them. We got us a new band we love and our drive to the beach is once again rejuvenated.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some dry sunshine to attend to. There will be no talk of surfing until Monday morning when I pull into the lot blasting “Platform Damage” ready to put my fins through the lip. —Travis Ferré

[Photo: Chris Shaw of Memo PST at Inherent Bummer Live shot by Bowie De La Pena]