Photo by Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon
Beach House, Beach Fossils, Ghost beach…In an undisclosed interview a band said “any band with beach in their name can’t be taken seriously.” After reading the interview, James Alex immediately decided to call the band Beach Slang. Inspired by an old friend’s playful stab at Alex’s skater vocabulary, Beach Slang is totally rad regardless of whatever that other band said about beach-named bands.
The Noisey power-pop-punk from these Philadelphians is drenched in fuzzy guitars, bass, and heart-pumping punk beats–its at once assaulting, melodic, and highly accessible. At the center of the pop-punk attack James Alex’s love for Charles Bukowski can be heard in every drunken proclamation of melancholy, self-loathing and dissatisfaction. Alex sounds weathered and weary with a smoky voice somewhere between Archer’s of Loaf’s Eric Bachman and a post-throat surgery Black Schwarzenbach. Yet he does not sing in a defeated whimper but a defiant wail, and the passion that blasts from his speakers transforms his lyrical gloom into a life-affirming call to push against life’s hardships.
