Beach Slang Will Save Your Life

One of my favorite things about music is how it can instantly transport you to a certain place and time. An even cooler feeling is when a band or song that you're just hearing can still transport you to the past. When Japandroids second album, Celebration Rock (which is still one of my favorite albums of the past 10 years), came out it reminded me of something I would have blasted in my car with the windows down on a summer night during high school. It just had that kind of feeling to it. Now when I listen to that album, even though it only came out a few years ago, it makes me think of high school.

Another band that gives me that exact same feeling is Philadelphia's Beach Slang. Fronted by Alex James, no band in recent memory has been able to capture the recklessness, angst and emotion of being young like they have. They first hit my radar in 2014 when they put out a couple of fantastic EPs in Cheap Thrills on a Dead End Street and Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken? In the eight songs contained on those two EPs I found my new saviors of rock and roll.

I'll just let Alex James' own words to describe their sound:

“I’ve broken it down to what I believe to be a pretty descriptive three-point formula. I pretend I’m scoring a John Hughes film then I ask myself, ‘How would Bukowski write the lyrics?’ Then I ask, ‘What kind of chords and melody would Paul Westerberg [of The Replacements] put behind that?’ So that’s what I’m aiming for. I probably fall well short of that but that’s the aim, the bullseye.”

The band has been steadily gaining hype leading up to the 2015 release of their first full-length album, The Things We Do to Find the People Who Feel Like Us. I'm not sure if it will garner them the fame they deserve but it's cool to see an actual rock and roll band get buzzed about.

The band played in Lawrence last November to a tiny crowd so hopefully they'll come back through again to a bigger reception. Check out the video of 'Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas' below.


Beach Slang Website

-Matt