The Scene

There was a time when rock and roll could save your life. Or at least that was the mythos, the yearning desire, that a pumping beat with a surging guitar or two and an earnest bloke at the mic could take you from that dead-end town to somewhere hopeful and transcendent.

Maybe was never the case, or maybe it was but now it isn’t. Or perhaps it’s always been a truth but, like Peter Pan’s Neverland, there just aren’t enough people that believe anymore. That’s why Beach Slang exists.

Three dudes from Philadelphia, lead singer and guitarist James Alex, Ed McNulty on bass and Ruben Gallego, also strumming on the guitar. They used to have a drummer but he left which is all goods because they’re getting on alright without a permanent stick man. And Gallego has also left because of some old sexual abuse thingamajig, which is being dealt with legally so no comment on all that.

It doesn’t matter, Alex is the main man. He writes the tunes and he preaches the sermons. Having been a member of 90s punk battlers Weston for ages, he quit music to go back to art school and soon enough was working a regular old job like the rest of us plebs. Yet now, in his early 40s, he’s out there playing gigs almost every damn night and that life’s journey definitely informs the music.

It’s all stuff about living and feeling alive. Stuff about escape and purpose. Stuff about feeling things really bloody hard. Beach Slang preach to the rock and roll romantics. In an interview with The Guardian, James Alex spoke the words: “Rock’n’roll to me is holy. I want to honour it properly”. That right there is Beach Slang in a nutshell.

The Songs

Future Mixtape for the Art Kids – The right balance of heavy drumming and power chords. One of the better ones of the lot, pretty sweet when the percussion drops out in the bridge.
Atom Bomb – Shortest of the lot, more of a punk progression. Does what it sets out to achieve.
Spin the Dial – Aiming for that ‘Mats feel a little too hard but the lead riff and the triumphant chorus save it and carry it.
Art Damage – Can you tell this dude went to art school? A little forgettable amidst it all, sorta lacks the punch or the finesse.
Hot Tramps – “I can’t love ya raw enough”… ease on, bro.
Punks in a Disco Bar – Yeah matey. This is the jam right here, from the opening progression to the less is more lyrical build and a healthy dose of quiet-loud. I never cared for men in coats either. Wait, that’s not what he says?
Wasted Daze of Youth – Did you get the pun? As far as the slower, more vulnerable stuff here goes, this one tracks pretty decent.
Young Hearts – Bruce Springsteen did it better.
The Perfect High – Yeah… by this stage you’ve heard it before. Doesn’t hit the late-album emotional impact it searches for and the end is a bit weird, to be honest.
Warpaint – Meh.

The Vibe

A while back I was kinda taken by this album by a band called The Gaslight Anthem. The album was called ‘The 59 Sound’ and, yes, the dude had an annoying voice and the band was a bit too heavy to carry the nuance they seemed to think they had. The songs were heart-on-the-sleeve things yet so full of canonical rehashing that you’d be taking the piss to call them original.

Still, they were good songs. All teenage dreams and bleeding hearts. Cadillacs and Chevys. Small town America craving something more. You know, the things Bruce Springsteen artfully perfected a couple decades earlier. There was nothing original about what The Gaslight Anthem did but it didn’t matter because even the secondary instincts seemed to tell a story in themselves: this was nostalgia for an imagined past. Think about that. Dying to return to something that never was, at least not in the experience of this band or myself. The vintage rock and roll aesthetic was almost like a metaphor.

So when their next album came out I was excited… and then quickly disappointed. It sucked. They couldn’t recapture the lighting in a bottle that they’d found the first time and their following album was even worse. Sometimes a band only gets lucky that one time. Last I heard the lead singer was embarking on a solo venture and I honestly couldn’t care less. I don’t listen to that album anymore but I might let a song play if it popped up on shuffle.

Beach Slang are sort of like the market correction of that band. A more durable version, anyway. What’s crazy is that they recorded their first EP before they’d ever played a gig and for a fella like James Alex who has spent his whole life getting to this point, things have since happened mighty fast for him. Which is poetic because the track on that debut EP that really took off was called ‘Filthy Luck’.

Again, there’s nothing original about this band either. They encapsulate a whole bunch of ideas that have all been played before. Adolescent angst, life and death stakes, music is everything. All things you’ve heard before. Yet… I dunno. There’s something striking here. I mean, I hear Alex talk in vids and he’s almost comically pastiche. He’s not trying to be but that’s who he is. The words he writes are way too clichéd to have any relevance beyond the songs but there’s just something about hearing loud guitar music played by someone who cares.

“Play it loud, play it past. Play me something that will always last. Play it tough, play it quiet. Play me something that might save my life.”

Those are the opening lines of the album, delivered within 24 seconds of the first note. Kinda sums up the entire album, really. Unless your eyePod happens to catch a bullet for you, it probably won’t literally save your life but that ain’t really the point. The music we love, we ascribe the meaning to it that we want it to have and perception is reality, as they say.

The Music

If the Replacements never existed then neither would Beach Slang. The lineage is almost a straight line. James Alex can only ever be a poor man’s Paul Westerfield (maaate, check out The I Don’t Cares) though he’s got himself a little space carved out where his hushed rasping scream of a voice (I reckon that sums it up) can spill what passes for high school notebook poetry above a couple power chords and a crowd of people ready to party and that’s a great thing.

I liked their last album. It was fun. This one is better, a little more urgent and a little more focussed on what makes this band what it is. It starts with the lead single Punks in a Disco Bar which is a banger of a tune. I love it.

See, these are mostly dumb lyrics but they’re simple lyrics that are easy to sing along to and that’s the whole point. This kind of tune, it’s empowering. It’s optimistic. It’s distrusting of authority and carefree in the chase for happiness. There’s no magical formula at work, that’s the secret. Also, the video’s pretty cool.

You couldn’t call them a pure rock band, these guys are punks for sure. But punk rock sort of edged out the so-called classic rockers anyway in that boundary pushing way. Like, The Rolling Stones used to scare the hell outta ordinary parents. Now there are three generations revering at their feet (including me – so pumped for this new blues album, I’ve been waiting for them to get back to the roots for years now!). But punk still has the ability to ward off those that it doesn’t want to appeal to. Beach Slang know the benefit of a melody though, so they certainly tread the line.

Future Mixtape for the Art Kids has a stupid title but is another one of the standout tracks, opening the record with a triumphant statement of intent. Spin the Dial is another one worth jamming doing that quiet-loud thing really well and the way there’s always an extra guitar weaving its way over things, leaving a snail trail of screech is pretty superb.

There isn’t a moment where the intensity ever drops. Even in the quiet moments there’s still a heavy drum beat thumping or a suspenseful guitar ready to ramp it back up to 11. Young Hearts is a nice change of pace towards the end where they reach for something more poignant. Warpaint closes it out with a stop start attempt at the old standard ‘give them something deep and meaningful to finish on’ but it doesn’t really work. Like, it’s just another Beach Slang tune, whether you cut the rhythm section out or not doesn’t make it suddenly more profound. Plus there’s a band called Warpaint that is better than this band, so the shared title isn’t flattering.

Hey but the whole album is not even 30 minutes long. That’s the beauty of these guys: they know what people want from them and they aren’t trying to do anything else. No ten minute jams to skip over, just ten punchy tracks of catchy hooks and loudness. And when the punks hit the disco bar you know that they’ve done their job.

Revelations

I dig the album cover, man. That’s one thing they always do well. That and the other thing they do well which is the one thing they do at all. But they do it well, so all good.

Before he was James Alex, he was James Snyder. Just so you know. Not sure which I prefer, there’s something sceptical about people with two first names.

For all their classic rock imitation, Beach Slang is also pretty modern in how they accept their own weakness rather than glorifying or ignoring it. Everyone is welcome, all the misfits and losers, the rebels and the saints. That vibe right there.

James Alex: “A lot of the songs [on Loud Bash] are the stories of the kids who got turned on to Beach Slang by the first album. They’re autobiographical, too, but kind of at a remove—I’m not that young kid anymore, but I used to be. You know how it is; rock and roll is a new crop of 15-year-olds picking up guitars every year and having at it. There was something really cool about documenting someone else’s life, but seeing myself in it. I suppose that’s why we connect. We’re all kind of one big gang.”

Apparently their live shows are something fierce.

Finale

To be honest, the earnestness gets overbearing and keeps the album from achieving regular rotation status beyond its initial run. There’s only so many times you can listen to a song that sound like ones you’ve heard before and this one, even at a rapid runtime, still has a few dud tracks. But there are moments in there that do capture what Beach Slang is all about and when you get that irresistible energy that strikes, the head is going to nod just a little, the foot is gonna start gently tapping and the lip will curl just enough to show it means uncontrollable business.

A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings shan’t be cracking the top ten lists, at least not my one. But not everyone is out there trying to make Blonde 2.0 or whatever. The flippin’ White Album 2016. I kinda like that there are bands out there like Beach Slang that know their thing and they stick to it. They’re the ones that keep the flag flying so that we don’t have to. They’re the ones that keep the candle burning. Perhaps it’s a self-sacrificial act but somebody’s gotta do it.