Beach Slang
The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us
Polyvinyl Records (2015)
Sounds Like: The Replacements, Japandroids, Jawbreaker
Score: 9.0/10
A lot of hype has been building up around Beach Slang’s debut full length, The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us. After releasing two fantastically well received EPs in 2014, Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken? and Cheap Thrills On a Dead End Street, the band followed by relentlessly touring as if it was their final tour. That’s the feeling Beach Slang mastermind, James Alex, conveys in his heart-on-sleeve writing: go-for-broke living.
Alex is a pedigreed punk with nearly 20 years co-fronting Pennsylvania punk act, Weston. On The Things We Do…, he finds himself atoning with his goddess — which in this instance happens to be the “kids,” all while borrowing a few tricks from The Replacements. These carefully produced tracks, while more polished than their previous releases, still hold more heart than most bands can conjure up. Accompanied by a Dinosaur Jr-esque wall of wailing fuzzed out guitars, every verse Alex passionately utters is as cathartic as the next.
“There’s a light on those filthy streets where the throwaways get weird and free.” Album opener “Throwaways” is a perfect template for how the rest of the album plays out; a manifesto for outsiders and rejects. But unlike many of Beach Slang’s counterparts that celebrate the debauchery of punk, they instead particularize in what it means to share a common love of music and creativity with a small group of people.
The Things We Do… also shows us another side of the band, a side that was prominent in their NPR Tiny Desk performance. In all their fuzzed out devil-horn glory, these earnest songs beautifully translate acoustically, as shown on “Too Late to Die Young.”
Not every song is meant as a grand statement, yet through Beach Slang’s talents, they are perfectly and unintentionally perceived that way. From the veracity of “Ride the Wild Haze” to the slow tempo “Porno Lovers,” they’ve crafted a near perfect album of self-reflective pop-punk jams, while managing not to sound like a slew of anthemic songs for the type of people who shop at Urban Outfitters. But do get ready to see a lot of kids with verses from this album tattooed on their unshowered bodies.
The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us is available 10/30 on Polyvinyl Records.
-Alan Madrigal
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