I’m back from an event-packed weekend, ready to provide you a music review AND a concert review. First the album, and then scroll down for the corresponding concert.
Disc 1571 is…. Future Lovers EP (as part of the “Sisters Not Twins” re-release)
Artist: The Beaches
Year of Release: 2021
What’s up with the Cover? The band, resplendent in colour. This is the second record in a row where the band embraces the old school “four of us stand in a line” cover and I’m liking it. I hope they keep it up. It isn’t a great T-shirt, though. More on that later.
How I Came To Know It: Somehow this album eluded me as an EP. I caught up to it by accident when it was re-released as the “Sisters Not Twins [the Professional Lovers Album]”. This was basically the 2021 Future Lovers EP paired with the 2019 EP, “The Professional”. I never did see “Future Lovers” on its own, but it all worked out in the end.
How It Stacks Up: I have five Beaches albums, consisting of four EPs and one LP. Or, if you count “Sisters Not Twins” as a full LP, the count is three and two.
This double count is because “Sisters Not Twins” combines the band’s previous two EPs. And it doesn’t just put them both on one disc, it mixes the tracks up in a whole new order. In this way it is all its own record and should probably be reviewed as such.
However, that ship sailed, because I reviewed “the Professional” EP back in February 2020 (Disc 1340). Rather than talk about all those songs all over again, let’s just focus on what’s new to me, and that’s the five tracks from “Future Lovers”.
Still with me? OK, let’s rank it pretending it is just the EP, meaning I have four EPs and one LP. Of the four EPs, I rank “Future Lovers” at #4. Hey, something had to be last…
Ratings: 3 stars
“Future Lovers” has the classic Beaches sound: anthem-inspiring tunes with a little thump and a lot of jump. As Tom Haverford would say, these gals know how to write a quality banger.
The best of the bunch is “Bad Behaviour” which has fuzzed out guitar sound mixed with a jaunty vocal delivery by Jordan Miller:
“Said shе was tired
Of stayin' up getting wired
Now she lives in Berlin
With Steampunk Italians”
It isn’t a song about a lot of deep thought, mostly about living the fast life, but none of that matters. Like any good pop song it is barely over three minutes long, ends early, and leaves you wanting more.
I also dig “Blow Up” which is that antsy feeling of being at one club and wanting to go to another one hoping it will be better. I think. I understand this feeling, but in my clubbing days I was much more likely to want to nest in the first reasonable club I came upon. Nothing worse than feeling your sweat cool off and your beer buzz fade on a frosty Autumn evening, waiting in some line you could have avoided simply by staying at the club you were already at. But I digress…
While the album is mostly “bangers” or at least songs aspiring to the title, there are some sweet spots, notably “You Don’t Owe Me Anything” which features Jordan’s sweet, slightly sad vocals as she sings about a no-strings attached one night stand. The song rambles a little, with Jordan doing a bit of talking over the tune. Ordinarily this would annoy me (sing it!) but here she reminded me favourably of the Shangri-Las with her mix of tough and tender.
The record overall is solid, but it suffers a bit by comparison with their previous release. And it doesn’t help that my copy is mixed in with the five songs from “The Professional”. While good, with the exception of “Bad Behaviour” the tunes on “Future Lovers” just aren’t quite at the same level.
Fortunately, it is still a Beaches record, and even their weakest EP is still a lot of fun.
Best tracks: Bad Behaviour, Blow Up
The Concert: July 11, 2022 at the Philips Brewery Backyarder, Victoria
Yes, you read that correctly! Concerts have returned, and this was the return of the Backyarder, which after a couple years of COVID cancellations came back with a vengeance in 2022, with three separate weekends of music.
This past weekend was the second of the three, which was called “Tilt” for reasons that I did not care enough to investigate. I was just happy to have a show to go see, and even happier that my lovely wife Sheila (who usually hates any kind of outdoor festival) decided to give it a chance as well.
Tilt had five bands but since Sheila and I were only interested in the last two on the ticket we went for dinner first, and showed up late, just in time to catch the ‘opener’…
Before that started though, there was plenty of time for people watching in the late afternoon summer sun. Festival crowds are interesting, with a lot of people wearing boring but comfortable athleisure, peppered with every tenth person dressed up either nice, weird, or nice and weird.
While other middle-aged folks were there, we were decidedly in the minority and the vast majority were well under 35. Everyone was well behaved and the sheer variety in the crowd made for some quality people watching.
But enough about the people – here are the two bands we saw. Also, since we like to patronize the merch table, I’ve also provided a “merch rating” which I think a fine feature for these live show reviews, and something I may keep doing down the road.
Snotty Nose Rez Kids
First up were the Snotty Nose Rez Kids, which is a hip hop band from the Haisla Nation, located in Northwest BC. I’ve been a fan for a few years now, and if you want to know more about the band read my reviews at Disc 1377 and Disc 1526.
As for the live show, I was nervous. When I see hip hop live it sometimes feels like the bass overpowers any chance to hear the lyrics and you just get a bunch of close-mic muffling.
Not so the Rez Kids. They are old school in approach and keeping the arrangements simple also lets you hear what’s going on very well. They had a great energy and played a set full of my favourites. Their banter was a bit by the numbers, but it was full of energy (at one point just getting the crowd to chant the “Energy! Energy! Energy!” which seemed a bit on point.
Merch rating: A. SNRK had at least five different concert t shirts and they were all awesome. This included a play on Iron Maiden album covers, which featured hip hop versions of Eddie. Sheila got one of those. I went with a cool looking ghost/shipwreck design. I’m a sucker for a nautical theme.
Beaches
This is the third time I’d seen the Beaches. There’s a reason I’ve been that many times, and why I would go again tomorrow; the Beaches are great live. This time around I could really only see the top third of them from my vantage point, but that was still enough to know they still had the magic.
The Beaches are pure rock energy. This time around they were all dressed in bright colours, so even at a distance it was easy to pick up all their high kicks, hair twirls and general derring-do.
Armed with even more crowd-pleasing songs from their latest album (see above for details), they were once again on top of their game. The Beaches look young but they’ve been making music for a good ten years now, and it shows. They play as a true band, feeding off each other with an easy vibe that felt even more rollicking in front of so many drunk and stoned revelers.
They divided their show up into two equal halves that fully rocked out, with a caesura of three slow bummer songs that felt like they were there so you could grab a beer and your breath before the second half of the set kicked off. I thought the slow tunes were lost a bit in the bigger venue, but the overall effect of creating some layers to the performance worked well.
There were a couple of minor issues with the show. First, the sound was a bit over-amped to start causing the guitars to fuzz out in a not-good way, but by about song three or four, the mix was sorted out. I’ll always forgive a bit of off-sound early in a show, as long as it gets fixed, and here it did.
The Beaches do need to work on their banter. While they clearly like each other, they have a tendency to talk over each other in a way that prevents you hearing any of them very well. Also, when I could hear them, they tended to ramble. I know its artificial to do a prepared schtick every night, but they might want to have roughly blocked out a bit of the dialogue in advance.
These are both minor quibbles, however. The Beaches are one of my favourite bands to see live, and I’ve seen a few. They are all gifted musicians who love to perform, and it shows.
Merch Rating: Average. The Beaches had a cool new font and a funky yellow shirt, but it also had cutouts of all their heads. Band shirts should be artsy, not just a picture of the band.
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