As we reported here last month, our favourite Philadelphia punks Beach Slang are UK bound early next January, following the release of album 'The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us', out on October 30 via Big Scary Monsters (UK/Europe).
As a prelude to both, we get to know them a little better...
This interview originally appeared in music blog Officially A Yuppie. For this and more music profiles, you can reach their site with a click here.
Words: Salvatore Bono
Your debut is one of the most anticipated of the fall, do you feel pressure that it needs to live up to the hype?
For me, right, it's less about living up to hype and more about not wanting to disappoint the kids who rallied up behind us, you know? It's about not wanting to disappoint myself as a writer. Look, hype is a tricky, little thing. I try not to indulge in it all too much.
The release of this album has been a long time coming for your fans, what do you hope fans take away from hearing it?
I hope it's the exact thing they were hoping it would be. I hope it helps them get through something. I hope it lights them up. I hope we can scream along lots. I hope it makes things better.
What did you do differently on the album that you didn’t do on the EPs?
The main thing, I suppose, was remembering this is a bigger listening investment. It needed mood shifts. It needed to evolve and stretch and stuff. On a four-song EP you can kind of just full-throttle through the whole thing. That, I think, would burn out and super limp over ten songs, you know? So, yeah, there was a very considered curation - from writing to song selection to sequencing etcetra - with this record.
The title of the record is something that really hits home with me and I am sure everyone else that has come out to your gigs. Does that title still resonate with you even being in the band?
I only know how to write things that resonate with me. I mean, if I don't feel it, how can I ask someone else to? So, yeah, when that line fell on me, I knew, straight away, it would be the title of this record.
What do you say to the fans out there that are doing whatever they can to find people who feel like them but are having difficulties doing so?
Keep doing it. Look, all the best things I have, the best people I know, all that stuff, none of it came easily. But there is real beauty in that struggle, in that searching. It prepares you. It expands you. And then, when those amazing things come, you're ready.
Hailing from Philly, how much has the city influenced you?
It's given us that blue collar, go-after-it thing. It's made us fighters. Philadelphia has this really romantic grit to it. And that's just sort of in our bones now.
You are a punk band but there are touches of new wave, cold wave, even indie. Who are some of your influences?
The Replacements, Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division, Magnetic Fields, Jawbreaker, The Smiths and Jesus & Mary Chain would be a pretty fair sum-up. But, yeah, I listen to almost everything.
The band are considered to be an indie-punk supergroup. Do you feel that way?
No way, not at all. We're skating by on dumb luck, clumsy charm and good manners.
Being in other acts before doing this, how does this compare to your previous work?
All that previous stuff bleeds in, right? But Beach Slang is the most honest, most urgent, of the lot. It feels good to dig in your past, but not get stuck there, you know?
The goal in being in a band is to write the best songs possible, do you feel that you have achieved that with this record?
Yes, these are the best songs I could write at the time I wrote them. That's a really satisfying way to feel. It's also really encouraging to know even better ones are coming.
Since the response to the band has been nothing but positive, how much fun are you having being in Beach Slang?
It's been pretty wildly alright. My guts are in a perpetual state of cartwheel, I swear it.
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BEACH SLANG UK DATES
JANUARY 2016
19 Norwich, Owl Sanctuary
20 Birmingham, The Rainbow
21 Manchester, Star & Garter
22 Glasgow, The Hug & Pint
23 Newcastle, Think Tank
24 Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
26 Nottingham, Bodega
27 London, Barfly
28 Bristol, The Exchange
29 Southampton, Joiners
30 Brighton, Green Door Store
These will be a must to see in Nottingham.
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