FEATURE: Spotlight: The Beaches — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Becca Hamel

The Beaches

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MAYBE known to more people…

in North America than the U.K. and Europe, I think that The Beaches would go down a storm here! The Canadian band formed in Toronto in 2013. Comprised of Jordan Miller (lead vocals, bass), Kylie Miller (guitar, backing vocals), Leandra Earl (keyboards, guitar, backing vocals), and Eliza Enman-McDaniel (drums) they released two E.P.s The Beaches (2013), and Heights (2014), before signing to Island Records. Their debut album, Late Show, arrived in 2017 - which led to the band winning the 2018 Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of the Year. Their second album, Blame My Ex, came out last year. I hope that the band come to the U.K. and play here. I love their music and know that this year is going to be where they truly explode and conquer the global. There are a wave of phenomenal women in bands making such fresh and impactful music. I have just finished writing about Australia’s Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. I have seen both them and The Beaches tipped for breakthrough this year. Both have been around for years now - though there is a sense that now is a time where their music is really being embraced. I am getting to a few interviews with the extraordinary Canadian quartet. A band that needs to be known to all. Such is the impact and quality of their music!

I am going to start out with an interview from Thomas Bleach. They were eager to know more about a cathartic and honest record in the form of Blame My Ex. A slightly different production sound and lyrical direction to their debut album, the band’s lead vocalist, Jordan Miller, talked more about their wonderful and must-hear new album. One that I would recommend to everyone:

“The Canadian rock darlings have created a beautifully honest and cathartic record that explores what happens on the other side of a break-up. Finding a way to contextualise their feelings that surpassed the dissolution of it, the album reflects on the emotions you face whilst moving on. Through highlights like “Shower Beer”, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Paranoid” and “Me & Me”, they were able to bring listeners perfectly into that world and state of mind.

I recently chatted to lead vocalist Jordan Miller from The Beaches about refraining from relying on the “lol” in her songwriting and finding a more vulnerable tone for this record, explored writing about her and bandmates queer identities, and reflected on the viral success of “Blame Brett”.

THOMAS BLEACH: Your sophomore album “Blame My Ex” is an empowering, honest, and relatable record that explores grief and finding yourself again following a break-up. It feels very liberating as a whole body of work. Was that specifically important for you to put that feeling out in the world with some honest truths grounded within it?

JORDAN MILLER: I mean, you just said it very well right there. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make when I started this record initially about a year and a half ago. And then back in August 2022 my relationship ended, and I was like, “Oh, this is gonna be what I’m gonna have to talk about”. There was this never-ending string of feelings, and the only thing that would make me feel better was trying to contextualize it through songwriting. It was sort of like therapy for me.

The more I wrote, the more I realized I didn’t want it to be a record about the dissolution of my relationship. I wanted it to be about what happens to someone after you experience a love that is lost, and what happens to you and like the ebbs and flows of that.

Some days you experience a little bit of catharsis. Like, that’s what “Me & Me” is about. It’s embracing being sort of happy, being alone, and the pleasure of being single and doing things like eating dinner by yourself. And then other times you experience social anxiety, and that’s what “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Paranoid” is about. I just thought that was interesting. Breakups and heartbreak is obviously a common theme with a lot of musicians, but I hadn’t ever heard a lot of records just about what happens to you afterwards. And that’s what I wanted this record to be about.

TB: I feel like you’re right there. Like now I’m thinking about all the breakup records I’ve been listening to in my life, and they’re all about the present moment, and not about the next chapter. There really is no rule book for that. There’s so many different explanations about how to get through a breakup, but what do you do when you’re on the other side and how do you restart?

JM: Exactly. What happens? Like, okay, you’re single now and you have to start fresh again, but you’re not over your ex and that makes things difficult. There were so many interesting things to dig through for me. Everyone assumes “Blame Brett” is a breakup song, and it is essentially as it’s about feeling heartbroken, but it’s also a song where I’m apologising to my future partners because I’m not emotionally available for them. Everyone thinks Brett is the bad guy, but I’m actually the bad guy in the song.

TB: There is a polish to this record, while still having a bit of a gritty punch of your debut record “Late Show”. What would you say is the portal track from “Late Show” to “Blame My Ex”?.

JM: I always like to think of our EPs as sort of like the portals in between like two records. I think where you get to start to hear us being a little bit like this record is on a song called “Orpheus” that we put out last year. It’s a song about missing somebody who you used to love in high school. I used the Orpheus legend as a way to play with that idea of long lost love.

I think the earnestness of that track was sort of a portal to this record because I think where this record differs from some of our other stuff is that it’s a lot more earnest and a lot more adult sounding. I’m relying less on my tongue in cheek humor and my jokes, and I dive into pain and grief in a literal way with being less goofy.

TB: How have you found reclaiming your queer experience in music so far?

JM: I actually just had this conversation on a podcast with the girls from The Aces about certain terminology. They’re all lesbians but for a long time they used the word queer to describe themselves because the word “lesbian” was a very loaded word for them. But they’ve started to really embrace it and re-call themselves that. I’ve gone by “queer” a lot because it’s a little easier to just generalise. But other times I’ve said I’m bi or pan. I’ve been publicly out since middle school. Basically, it’s on my Facebook, so it’s always been out there.

Leandra faces a lot more irritating comments because she’s been in a relationship with a woman longer than maybe I have. I’ve only ever been in one proper relationship, and it happened to be with a man”.

I want to move on to an interview from Canadian website, Exclaim. They chatted with The Beaches about their fantastic new album and path to recognition. There is an interesting background to The Beaches forming and how they got to where they are now. Working through heartache and personal dislocation through catharsis, humour, honesty and inspirational songs, Blame My Ex is understandably an album that connected with a lot of people. The Beaches also discussed how they have worked hard to reach more queer and young women. To people they identify with as young women. A hugely important band whose music is among the most compelling out there:

“That heartbreak is all over the band's new album, Blame My Ex (out September 15), and its laugh-through-the-tears lead single "Blame Brett," which finds Jordan warning future partners, "So sorry in advance / Before you take off your pants / I wouldn't let me near your friends / I wouldn't let me near your dad."

Brett, by the way, is the guy's real name. They experimented with pseudonyms, but "other names just really didn't hit the same way, like Zack," says Enman-McDaniel. "It just didn't work." The percussiveness of "Brett" was glorious.

This meant an awkward phone call was required. "I spoke to him about it when we were writing the song," Jordan says sheepishly. "I said that 'Blame Brett' was just really good alliteration and kind of funny. I asked him if it was okay, and he said, 'I'm a little nervous for the feedback, but it's a really funny idea and go for it.'"

Thank goodness for Brett's blessing, because the song was an instant hit; a bit like Beyoncé's "Becky with the good hair," Brett is becoming a universal symbol for a familiar romantic entanglement. "There are Bretts everywhere," Kylie says.

The writing and recording process was almost self-flagellating for Jordan: "There were moments when I would write 'I still love Brett' on a piece of paper, just to get a really authentic performance," she remembers of going into the vocal booth.

Another single from Blame My Ex, the apathetic anthem, "Everything Is Boring," became what Jordan calls the album's "North Star," guiding them away from the joyous sound of "Grow Up Tomorrow" (which was ultimately left off the full-length) in favour of more breakup songs, with musical influences that veer away from the heavy riffs of the band's early catalogue and in the direction of new wave and sleek power pop.

"Jordan was healing," Kylie says of the therapeutic process. "There's a couple of songs that are hopeful and looking to the future — self-love and self-acceptance and queer relationships; exploring relationships with multiple people. And also just learning to love yourself at the end of the process."

With Jordan having worked through her heartbreak, and with the band having finally found the audience they were looking for, the Beaches have arrived at the destination they've been heading towards for 15 years.

Of course, this is real life, and things are never quite so clear-cut: the increased online visibility led to some pushback on Twitter, when their TikTok videos came under fire. Two of the band members have more recently gone through their own breakups, and the majority of them still live with their parents. The Miller sisters are back in their family home in the Beaches, the neighbourhood they named their band after.

"It was a big problem in my relationship," Earl says of her domestic situation. "We live such a weird life. Why do I want to pay so much rent when we're about to tour for like a ton of months? And my parents are so great. I live downtown and I'm grateful enough to have a house with my family. Eventually, I hope we start making some some nice cash where we can all move out comfortably."

With more than a hint of awkwardness, Jordan leans forward, confessing, "If I'm being candid — and I'm not sure if this is a good idea to admit this, for people who might want to date us who read this article — but it's very tricky to date musicians. It's a very different kind of lifestyle. There's like a lot of there's a lot of people that assume that we're just partying all the time, but it's really just kind of grimy and tiresome”.

Last October, The Line of Best Fit spoke with a group who have gone through reinvention and self-discovery. Signing to a new label and going through transformation. Their unity, focus and passion comes through. It has been a changeable past eight or nine years for The Beaches. It seems like everything is fully in place and formed now. Blame My Ex their truest and most powerful album. I think that this year will be their most successful:

“In 2022, The Beaches parted ways with Universal. Not by choice, though they make sure to clarify that there was no ill will, it’s just how the industry goes sometimes. They wouldn’t be who they are as people or as musicians, they explain, without their time at the label. But when it comes to the changing industry, the band is right. A reliance on digital trends has put a heavy numbers skew on music discovery and label priorities. It’s more common now to see acts signed that already have a following that labels hope to capitalize on rather than the label picking someone out from oblivion and building that following from the ground up. Virality is key and the competition is heavy, but leaving a major label it might now be fair to say, is no longer the career hard-stop it once was. Multiple notable breakouts from the past few years – including Raye and MUNA, to name a few – were released from the major system before finding their footing. Most impressively, these acts have actually used such moments as pivot opportunities and selling points for their future careers. Still, it takes a band with unrelenting grit to press on and make it work. The Beaches, it turns out, are seemingly one of those bands.

“We had a conversation with our agent – we’d been dropped from our labels and had changed managers as well – and he had a very honest discussion with us saying, ‘this next record has to be the thing that takes you over the edge,’” Jordan Miller recalls. “There was a lot riding on us, and it definitely felt scary,” Enman-McDaniel adds. “The numbers matter. But now it’s starting to change, and it’s starting to feel different for the first time in over 10 years. I think we’re all just finally accepting it because it’s hard to let go of being jaded, I guess.” Interjecting, Earl laughs “I’ve never been jaded!”

For the group, the big question was figuring out how to break out of the Canadian hard-rock bubble they’d been bouncing around in for much of their career. The paradox of the Canadian music scene is one familiar to its fans and artists alike. Government grant systems and Canadian content laws provide invaluable support to indie acts looking to get their start. Radio stations, for example, are required to play a minimum percentage of CanCon, a regulation system started in the 70s that tried to give homegrown acts a boost in order to compete with the behemoth industry operating south of the border. But CanCon, a contraction of Canadian Content, can be a double-edged sword. The rules to actually qualify are surprisingly stringent (no, qualification doesn’t just mean the artist whose name is on the byline is born in Canada), often turning accessing that Canadian government infrastructure and tapping into international markets an either-or choice for Canadian talent.

Heading back into the studio, The Beaches teamed up with a new manager, Laurie Lee Boutet, who helped rebuild them from the ground up. “She really helped us facilitate our relationship with different producers in Canada because we did the whole record in Toronto, which is great because you get the funding,” Kylie Miller says. “We went so far as redesigning our logo, redesigning our merch, everything. We really wanted this to be a fresh start and be our best foot forward, because there was a lot that just didn’t feel cool and authentic to us. Like, our logo was this EDM logo for years. It served a purpose and we love it – my mom has it tattooed on her – but, yeah, it was just taking care and paying attention to those details... we had to kind of go through everything with a fine tooth comb."

As for the music itself: “We wanted to create a record thatwe would listen to, that we would be obsessed with,” Jordan Miller expands. This meant that the group took cues from the increasingly popular indie-pop scene as well as the concurrent new wave revival. Their influences, they tell me, were a mix of Willow, The Cure, New Order, and everything in between. Miller, who takes care of most of the songwriting along with Canadian singer-songwriter Lowell, had also just gone through a breakup – with the now famous Brett, but more on that later – and wanted to put out a body of work that reflected the ups and downs of her own emotional journey”.

I can’t wait to see where The Beaches go from here. A stunning band who are busy touring and taking their new album to the masses, I hope they come and play the U.K. at some point. Another wonderful international band who have eager and dedicated fans here who want to see The Beaches in the flesh. Blame My Ex is a remarkable album from a group inspiring so many of their fans. Throw support behind them and connect through social media. It is clear that The Beaches are…