Album review: Dallas band Sealion’s Keep the Camera Rolling

by Cory Graves of Subservient Experiment

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Sealion’s strong debut is something of a harbinger with the power of unifying a generation of disenchanted twenty-somethings.

On their debut release Keep the Camera Rolling, Deep Ellum natives Sealion have fashioned quite the alluring formula: By taking the cultured Ivy League indie-pop, relocating it to the third coast, and adding in just enough punk flare to remain approachable (a combination we’ve come to refer to as "margarita punk"), they’ve managed to created one of the inescapably catchy releases so far this summer.

The bulk of the maxi-EP’s 8-tracks is comprised of back-to-back-to-back hooks — be they instrumental, a capella, or just plain full-on rock outs — that make the often-under-three-minute jams feel like multi-part mini suites. Big fist-pumping, throw-back-your-head-and-sing-a-long moments abound, (see: the endings of “Steampunk Jetpack” and “All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes”) many of which are simple enough to join in on upon first listen.

And for all its catchiness and innate danceability, Keep the Camera Rolling still manages to come off as a smart record, perfectly encapsulating the mix of confusion, doubts, and optimism that are so consuming during the unavoidable quarter-life crisis years. Fears like ending up alone (“You’re always the fox / You’re never the bride”) in “The Fox,” residing oneself to a life as a “lowly worker bee” in “Jean Paul,” the wistfulness and regret of growing apart from childhood friends as well as the fear of turning into one’s parents in “The Iranian Hairdresser,” make Sealion’s strong debut something of a harbinger with the power of unifying a generation of disenchanted twenty-somethings.

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