There is a specific kind of delusion required to make a surf-rock record in 2026: the conviction that eternal summer is not a fantasy but a birthright. Los Angeles quintet LavaLove operate entirely inside that conviction on Tan Lines, their second album for Pure Noise Records, released April 3. Produced by Anton DeLost, whose credits include State Champs and The Warning, the record is a confident, occasionally reckless sprint through SoCal girlhood, bar tabs, infatuation, and the odd murder. It is exactly as much fun as that sentence implies, and it has almost exactly the same problems.
LavaLove began as vocalist and rhythm guitarist Tealarose Coy‘s bedroom project in Hollywood in 2019, eventually expanding to a full quintet and signing to Pure Noise after the 2023 debut LP Love Sick. Tan Lines is the band’s attempt to take that initial charm and stretch it across something bigger, melding ’60s pop songcraft with garage grit and psych-pop shimmer into what DeLost has helped shape into their most cohesive statement yet. The influences are audible and worn proudly: Coy has cited the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a north star, and the shadow of Sabrina Carpenter‘s pop precision falls across more than a few arrangements here. The record is not subtle about any of this, and it does not need to be.
Where ‘Tan Lines’ Gets It Right
The album’s best moments come when LavaLove allow their sweetness to curdle into something more interesting. Opener ‘Hopelessly Devoted‘ kicks the record off with a frantic energy, the rush and crash of new infatuation captured in a riff that sounds borrowed from a jukebox and filtered through a garage. ‘Go Go Boots‘ is looser and more confident, its cruising tempo and bar-hopping lyricism (Tequila, Bacardi, tomorrow I’ll be sorry / I just want to spend your money) delivering exactly the kind of throwaway line that lodges itself permanently in your brain by the third listen.
The title track and ‘Messing With The Man‘ pull the album toward something with more structural weight, the latter pushing back against capitalism and sexism with a punkier directness that suits the band well. But ‘Sniffin’ Around‘ is the record’s quiet masterstroke. Built on the same cheerleader-chant energy as the rest of the album, it turns its sweetness into a vehicle for something genuinely dark: a coyly narrated murder fantasy about a cheating boyfriend, delivered with a grin so wide you almost miss the body. Coy has been transparent about the intent, noting the song leans into the idea of letting paranoia take control, leaving the story’s ending deliberately unresolved. It is the most fully realized thing on the record, the moment where LavaLove’s instinct for contrast actually pays off completely.
Where the Sugar Becomes a Problem
The record’s weaknesses are, fittingly, the inverse of its strengths. When LavaLove lean into their girlhood aesthetic without the counterweight of darkness or wit, the results can tip from charming into cloying. ‘Motion Picture‘ is the clearest example: its valley-girl vocal affectations, the string of Uh-huhs and Wooos, do not accumulate charm so much as deplete it. The issue is not the aesthetic choice itself but the absence of anything working against it. There is no tension, no twist, nothing underneath the surface worth excavating.
The album’s closer, ‘Shot‘, extends this problem to its logical extreme. The baby-voiced delivery of lines like Snuggle me and Tickle me lands with a specific kind of discomfort, the sort of cutesiness that feels less like a stylistic commitment and more like an unexamined default. It is a strange endpoint for a record that, at its best, demonstrates real sophistication about how to weaponize sweetness. LavaLove clearly understand that sugar is most interesting when it conceals something. On Shot, nothing is concealed. The sweetness is just sweetness, and it is too much.
Tan Lines earns a qualified recommendation on the strength of its better half. LavaLove are a band with a genuinely compelling instinct for contrast, a front-woman in Coy with real charisma and lyrical intelligence, and a producer in DeLost who knows how to give their sound room to breathe. When those elements align, the record is a genuine pleasure. When they do not, it is a reminder that charm is not a substitute for discipline. With some pruning and a willingness to trust the darkness they clearly have access to, LavaLove’s next record could be something worth arguing about.
