Has there ever been a musical group more committed to the conceptual panacea known as yacht rock than Pablo Cruise?
That hindsight-made genre can be found in the name. You can see it in the Pablo Cruise logo: the cheesiest sunset and palm tree art this side of a “My Parents Went to Florida and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” design. And the sound? The songs are a not-so-subliminal message telling you that someone else should be driving the boat in order for you to catch a few rays with a cold drink in your hand.
The conflation between the music and actual boating may have come to a head when the aforementioned logo was spotted emblazoned across the front of Will Ferrell’s chest in Step Brothers (2008); apparently many a viewer of the comedy thought it was the name of a luxury liner—connecting to the whole boat motif running through the movie. And if that were surprising, maybe the only thing more astonishing about Pablo Cruise is that the band is from San Francisco and not San Diego or Key West.
Softball single hits like “Love Will Find a Way,” “Cool Love,” and “Whatcha Gonna Do?” buoyed the group’s popularity on breezy vocals and the kind of plush velour harmonies that have given dentist offices across the country a more relaxed atmosphere for decades. The four-piece (currently five-piece, featuring two remaining original members) sailed on to the scene with a self-titled debut in 1975. Rising on the charts by the late ’70s, as the ’80s wore on its schtick began to lose favor with listeners whose tastes shifted to spicier, more assertive flavors.
Yet the delicate piano pump, economical guitar touches, and inoffensive whiff of funky bass somehow stand the test of time today. That is, the band’s classic sound stands as an audio time capsule for Jimmy Carter’s America—and like then, we’re dealing with rising energy costs and cultural divides, but Pablo Cruise still offers an original brand of escapism that you won’t get from the unsavory tropes shaping the majority of current pop.
While I can’t be sure that yacht rock wasn’t just an attempt to normalize doing coke outside, these easygoing songs about relationships avoid suspicion: They share all the good vibes of late afternoon summer sunshine
CAUTION: The writer’s unrestrained cynicism and unresolved issues shape the writing of this opinion column. Results may vary.
