Beach Slang are one of those bands who’ve wasted no time in established a quick and furious amount of momentum for themselves ahead of their debut Australian visit.
They’ll be out here for Splendour in the Grass in July, introducing their debut album, The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us, to music lovers but in the US, they’ve been on their grind since 2013. Off the back of two successful EP releases in 2014, the Philly rockers set themselves up to properly break through to more mainstream audiences and with their 2015 album, they most certainly started the chatter and widespread buzz.
We caught a snippet of the band’s live show at SXSW earlier this year and it was clear even back in March that they were already looking ahead to a huge 2016. Chatting with the band’s vocalist and guitarist James Alex ahead of their Australian tour, we get the idea that the year has been a bit of a wild ride already.
“It’s been kind of like a sweet blur, you know?” he says. “We’ve been on tour for pretty much all of it. We went home for a little bit, but we went into the studio to make the next record so we’ve really had very little downtime. That’s not a complaint though, we get to do the thing we love to do, but it’s been a pretty sweeping 2016 so far.”
“Rock and roll, as you know, is sort of a fleeting, slippery sort of career choice, right?” he continues, commenting on the fickle nature of success in the industry. “You don’t know when it’s going to go away – I just want to make sure that whatever the last thing we do [is] was done just like a hammer, you know? We’ve had decent luck with that.”
Of course, the debut Beach Slang album he refers to has had many positive reviews aimed its way since it was released and with a tour cycle having the band appear on festival and headline stages through Europe, the UK, Canada and back in the States before they even jump on a plane out to Australia, new music has still remained a high priority.
“We’ve got a new record coming out in September.” James says, excitedly. “It’s just a relentless pursuit of this thing, you know what I mean? I think people are shocked when they’re hearing we have another record coming out already, specifically given like how gruelling the first schedule has been and how much we’ve just been away.”
“It’s like, ‘When did you do this?’ If you want it, you can make it happen. We don’t give ourselves a safety net. We’re not walking the tightrope with the safety net. We don’t want another option. We’re like, ‘This is the thing we chose to do, we’re gonna do it all the way.'”
The band’s Splendour in the Grass debut is an appearance James is particularly looking forward to; being surrounded by the calibre of artists on the bill is an obvious drawcard but for Beach Slang, it’s still an opportunity to connect with unchartered musical territory.
“I can’t wait,” he enthuses. “The whole thing’s been such a weirdo trip so far, that like I feel prepared for anything right now and I’m just taking it with a huge smile on my face. It’s been an alright couple of years doing this thing, so we’ll see how long we can keep it on the radar.”
As we chat about recent shows, James notes his excitement about how the band is playing in particular. Being able to flesh album material out live and now, with the multitude of opportunities to expand on what’s already proven to be a strong live show at their feet, Beach Slang are surging forward confidently and abashedly as a touring band.
“We certainly give it our all,” James says. “We think we sound [like] ourselves on stage; I mean, half of this band met each other by playing in this band, it was the first time we met each other. Now we’re this far into the band, we feel like we have each other figured out; we’ve hit our stride and that’s really rewarding.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7nXvOTqyCY
What Australian fans can expect from Beach Slang is a live show that will be a presentation of the band at their most honest. Approaching each show as if it’s their last, the band has formed a performance ethic that often will leave them weary, but satisfied that if that show was to be their final, they’re content with it.
“The thing with us is,” James says. “Whether we’re going to play to six people or 6000, we really tear our guts out and leave our hearts up there, you know? It’s like an all or nothing proposition for us. I don’t know if we know another way to go about it and I don’t know that we’re interested in another way of going about it.”
“We go up there and fight like the last show, every show feels like the last show we’ll ever play. We always want that sense of urgency; I’ve described it as wide-eyed hunger, you know? I want to make moments count in life, you know? And on stage, those are arguably my favourite moments that I exist, so if I’m not looking to make those count, what am I doing?”
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Beach Slang will be appearing at Splendour in the Grass on July 23rd. They’ll also be performing two sideshows with Spring King in Melbourne and Sydney. Grab tickets to the below:
July 20th | Oxford Art Factory, SYDNEY | Tickets
July 24th | Corner Hotel, MELBOURNE | Tickets
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