The Submarines

Everything is beach-y keen and totally waterproof on The Submarines' Honeysuckle Weeks. For a band with a submersible name, the married duo of John Dragonetti and Blake Hazzard certainly keep things light and buoyant throughout their second full offering. Recorded in the couple's garage cum studio in East Los Angeles, the new disc is a sparkly mix of SoCal indie pop just begging to score a Grey's Anatomy montage. Warm electronic flourishes, keyboards and cymbals meld with good old-fashioned strumming' to bore an easy, breezy 35-minute spectacle.

The Submarines' first CD, Declare a New State, was an odd sort of collaboration; Dragonetti and Hazzard wrote separate parts of that record during a break-up. When they reunited, they put them together. Honeysuckle Weeks, in turn, becomes their first actual collaborative effort—and it avoids any of the achy, break-y heart sentiments they might once have felt. Charming jaunts like "You, Me, & the Bourgeoisie" and "Swimming Pool" are splashy and drip with sentiments of love, while the playful whistling and pop la la la's of "Fern Beard" make it hard to not feel the good vibrations. Hazzard, an unplugged Liz Phair sound-alike, adds a little glitter to Weeks' handful of tracks, but it's truly Dragonetti's instrumentation that strikes sonic gold. It shouldn't take you until the disc’s dreamy closer, "Brightest Hour," to see there's a whole lot keeping this Submarines album afloat.

—Matthew Allard
05.09.08

Less than four years ago, John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard were estranged lovers with a talent for penning pretty pop songs about heartache. Declare a New State! captured that brief period, mixing cheerless lyrics like "Ain't no sunshine gonna take away this rain" with sunny, drum-machined instrumentation. The album also had a therapeutic effect, as Dragonetti and Hazard ultimately reconciled their differences and married each other before its release. Arriving two years later, Honeysuckle Weeks captures the happy couple living in Los Angeles, a town whose summery weather lends a glow to this second batch of pop, indie electronica, and co-ed charm. "Your love finds you even when you've given it up," Hazard sings in the opening track, "Submarine Symphonika," neatly setting the tone for Honeysuckle Weeks' ten offerings of relief and optimism. From a vocal standpoint, this is the Hazard show, as all but three songs feature her unadorned vocals at the forefront. Meanwhile, Dragonetti whips up a cloud of vintage dub loops, guitar arpeggios, programmed percussion, and assorted bleeps and bloops, largely composing the band's bubbling instrumentation from the sidelines. Both bandmates sound positively elated to move past the heartbroken themes of Declare a New State!, and they avoid that album's biggest pitfall -- its inability to tackle any subject other than the pair's breakup -- by turning their love into a metaphor for plant renewal ("Fern Beard," "Thorny Thicket"), sunlight ("The Brightest Hour"), and a bottomless swimming pool ("Swimming Pool"). Honeysuckle Weeks may not be as immediately captivating as the band's debut, but it's certainly a much smarter effort, with the Submarines proving that inspiration lies in both ends of the emotional spectrum. ~ Andrew Leahey, All Music Guide