“I like surfers,” said Ray Davies once. “Their imagery—it’s great. And that floating feeling . . . ” And then when the Kinks went to Australia, they refused to get in the water—stood on the beach in their overcoats. But that doesn’t douse the purity of the expatriate’s affection for California—something Tyde songwriter/frontman Darren Rademaker had as a kid growing up in Florida, and something he honors and explores over so-far three albums of studied and intricate pop. He laughs (but sincerely) now about Dennis Wilson, whose Pacific Ocean Blue harmonizes well with the Tyde’s most propulsive guitar-and-keyboard songs: “I love Dennis because he’s not really quite as good as Brian and Carl. That makes it even better—he’s trying so hard . . . ” And he jokes too about his own writer’s block as the Tyde slide into their fourth studio album, following up Once, Twice and—not “Three Times A Lady,” which Rademaker says people kept asking—but Three’s Co. with a to-be-disclosed fourth-related title—maybe only one song in 10, he says, makes it out of his bedroom. Tyde is loved over in England—where their Smiley Smile-on-Rough-Trade-sounding records are actually released on Rough Trade—but Rademaker likes to travel his band as much as he can locally, too, the way Neil Young (another expat) used to play every tiny coastal town he could. “We played Lake Forest and all the surfer kids just danced the whole time,” he says. “It’s the same as overseas—they want to see you because you’re different.”

Tags: the prospector, the tyde