Review: Vista Blue – “The Senator’s Daughter”

Self-released, June 5, 2020

Vista Blue toss off an odds and sods sampler that seems effortless and makes me jealous.

Nashville, Tennessee’s Vista Blue are one of the more prolific power pop/pop punk bands around, releasing a bunch of music with pretty great regularity.  Always messing around with the power pop/pop punk thing, the band seems to be privy to a seemingly bottomless pit of great melodies and hooks.  The Senator’s Daughter, the band’s most recent EP, brings together a tribute song, a song about a wrestler, a prank, and a kids song.  And somehow it works pretty well.

At only four songs, The Senator’s Daughter doesn’t need to keep your attention for long.  But with songs like these, you’ll be left wanting more.  Opener “The Senator’s Daughter” is a cover of a Fountains Of Wayne song, originally from May’s Can’t Shake That Tune tribute record.  The Vista Blue version holds pretty close to the original with a little of that extra Vista Blue guitar fuzz tossed on.  The hooks are great and the synth solo on the bridge hits right.  It’s a great song.  The second song, “Colt Cabana #1”, is a faster song, galloping along with some more guitar fuzz and nice catchy hooks on the bridge and chorus as they sing about professional wrestler Colt Cabana.  It’s sort of got a cool Ramones-y vibe to it and is a bunch of fun.

The back half of the EP is a little more random, but still pretty much works.  “Cactus!” is a 24 second song written for the Phone Losers of America prank call show.  It’s dumb.  They just repeat the word “cactus” over and over again for the songs entirety, layering on some nice backing vocals and cool synth to make it a lot more fun than it has any right to be.  And closer “Four Seasons” is an acoustic demo for a song off The Kids Still Don’t Like It.  With a stripped down sound focusing on an acoustic guitar and some great lead and backing vocals, the song gets by because of its hook.  It’s so simple and so right, and it kind of makes me jealous.  

Stuff like this shouldn’t work.  Really, going back and reading the second-to-last sentence in the intro paragraph, The Senator’s Daughter sounds pretty dumb.  But the songs are infectious and just straight good.  Check this out, and dig into their other stuff while you’re at it.