Was told about this band by a friend in 2020 shortly after their second album came out and fell head over heels. Was cool to watch them blow up within the music scene I love, they put a new album out in 2021(Castles) that was 5 stars, easily my favorite release of that year and has grown to become one of my favorite albums ever. Check out something new and different for your Summer vibes. I’m glad somebody told me about this band, couldn’t imagine missing out on them so I’m passing it along🤙🤙🤙

The highlight of their 2017 debut album The Cornerstone. This album flew way under the radar even for that genre but it's really just as good as the 2 that came after it.

This song hits hard when your up on the roof shirtless in the sun framing a house in Texas in the Summertime

Second album Defy Gravity came out late 2018 and is so good. For this genre this band really came from out of nowhere, they were an East coast band without any affiliations with any of the other acts, never really toured with anybody. They were probably the big breakout band in this genre of 2020. I would say it started when they opened up Cali Roots 2019(singe event that was probably the peak of that whole music scene, Covid did some bad damage to the momentum those bands all had going you can look back to Cali Roots 2019 all those bands were at their zenith and whole festival was like a high point for everything). I believe they opened up the whole festival with early morning set on the first day that had everybody talking.

I think that performance put The Elovaters on the map. Cali Roots 2019 was really something special, it was like the zenith of a music genre that I struggle to categorize. To call it reggae just doesn't seem right anymore, really to me the genre just doesn't have a name, I reject all of the ones I've heard(Cali-reggae, etc) none of it works. To me what happened was a bunch of bands from California really picked up where Sublime left off with hybrid form of alternative music, that leaned heavily on drums/bass/guitar of reggae. After Sublime died the corporate record labels tried to create their own version of Sublime with bands like Smash Mouth and a lot of those pop-punk-ska type bands that flooded the radio in the late 90's/early 2000's. All of those bands the reggae side of what Sublime was doing seemed to be lost on them, it was a side of their sound that didn't get picked up by the imitators.

When Sublime singer Brad Nowell(the singer of Sublime that died shortly before they blew up) was in rehab for his drug addiction that ended up taking his life, he was living with one of his doctors trying to get clean and heard their kids jamming in the garage in their band. That band ended up being Slightly Stoopid, he ended up getting them signed to a record deal they were just teenagers. They got pretty big locally in Cali and were like an underground cult deal in the early 2000's. I feel like they were the spiritual successor to Sublime and kind of the protogenesis of this music genre I love/am writing about.



Because of the internet/pandora Slightly Stoopid blew up in the early 2010's, and with them they brought along some of their friends, Rebelution and Tribal Seeds became my favorite bands by 2013. Another band Fortunate Youth was right up there with them. Over the last decade those 3 have been my favorite bands that evolved and matured my whole music taste. They took what Sublime concepts started and really took it to a way higher level. Tribal Seeds put out one of my all time favorite albums "Represent" in 2014(probably my favorite album of the 2010's decade). Rebelution put together a string of consistently great albums throughout the decade and got pretty popular. Stick Figure was like an opening act around 2013-2014 and they got airplay on the XM Radio channel "No Shoes Radio" and blew up into a major headliner by 2019. They blew up and got even more popular than the Rebelution/Tribal Seeds/Fortunate Youths they were used to opening up for on tours. Their "Wisdom" album last Summer was the first of the genre to ever outsell Bob Marley's Legend greatest hits. 



It all culminated in 2019 there were probably 20 of the all time greatest albums of that genre all released within that 12 months, that whole music scene was on fire like nothing else. New bands were popping up weekly, new albums coming out every month that were genre defining. It really hit it's peak with Cali Roots 2019 that May, unbelievable 3 day festival where the whole genre was at it's best. I still watch the live videos on Sundays(the Tash Sultana video is probably one of my favorite live performances ever seen).



The whole scene kept thriving through 2019. In February 2020 they did the "One Love Cali-Reggae Fest" in Long Beach and the deck was absolutely stacked with legends and new artists. You see all the super-festival posters people post on facebook with every one of their favorite bands well this was the Reggae version of that for 3 days. I feel like this festival was the end of this music genre thriving the way it was. Literally a week later Covid lockdowns hit, any momentum these bands had going was killed when they couldn't tour anymore. Good music started to dry up too, after the lockdown all of the heavy hitters of the genre released some pretty weak material. The last wave of new bands(Elovaters, Little Stranger, Surfer Girl, Kash'd Out) are amazing but as a whole it feels like the scene at this point really seems to be on the decline. You reached that point where the big highly anticipated new albums coming out from the big bands are just flat(Rebelution's last one) or trying to evolve too far away from where they started(Hirie).

But I caught on with The Elovaters in 2020. I was SO hyped for their new album that came out in 2021, Castles, and it was the rare case of an album living up to that hype. And I feel like I have grown to love it even more over the last 2 years.

I'm definitely one of those 38 year old boomers that thinks everything sucks these days and was better back in the day, movies/tv shows, even a lot of technology was just better in the past, sorry. Radios back in the day shit all over any modern day stereo I can buy, CD's sound infinitely better than any streaming(especially worked better you know, when you can't PICK UP A FUCKING CELL SIGNALL!), hell I will even argue all day that renting videos from a store was just better than anything today with watching shit. I could go rent 5 movies for $5 from the video store back in the day and keep them all week, meanwhile I can't even rent most of the shit I look up on Amazon(that isn't on Netflix) and if it is on there it's like $9 for 24 hour access to a 30 year old fucking movie.

But I draw the line at music. People my age hate on music and I'm over here the last 10 years having a pretty good time with this stuff and lost a lot of interest in older metal/rock stuff I used to listen to. I couldn't imagine going to see some of the old 50 year olds in some of the bands everyone still goes to see. Been able to catch some really excellent young artists from all over the world in their primes the last few years, Tash Sultana, Jesse Royal, The Teskey Brothers, Stick Figure, Hirie on the beach, just lovely. It's awesome to find out about some brand new band nobody knows about and get obsessed with them. Thank you for making 2013-2023 suck much less.

Catch a better mood🤙🤙

I didn't like the new Elovaters album that dropped last Summer. At the time I was depressed, broke, kinda falling apart and hadn't been laid in a while. I also let my Amazon music subscription lapse around the time it came out so I listened to it on Youtube once or twice and brushed it off as not very good.

But I went back to it this week and damn, serene sublime cool as a motherfucker album all the way. Castaway is legit, and this song is my jam right now:



Another excellent album, not quite as good as their first 3 but still stellar. Easily one of the best newer bands to pop up over the last 6-7 years.