Titus writes:
The Beaches were formed in Toronto over ten years
ago and are a Canadian all-girl band. As in most of the blogs that I
compile, their line-up has changed, but is currently Jordan Miller,
Kylie Miller, Leandra Earl and Eliza Enman-McDaniel. Despite recording
2 EP’s in the 2010’s, it wasn’t until 2017, having signed to Universal
Records, that they released a debut album, called ‘Late Show’, which
was a big success, leading them to win the 2018 Juno Award for
Breakthrough Group of the Year. At its birth, the band members knew
each other well, as in their early teens, sisters Jordan & Kylie
plus Eliza, got together with Megan Fitchett to form Done with Dolls.
In 2013 Fitchett was replaced by Leandra Earl, and the quartet renamed
the band after the Toronto neighbourhood, where the sisters and
Enman-McDaniel grew up.
From
that first LP referred to above, two singles were released ‘Money’,
and then ‘T Shirt’ which peaked at No. 1 in the Billboard Canada Rock
Chart – I think that’s a first for this blog! Now, not a lot of
people know about a couple of facts here.......( i ) The Beaches opened
for the Rolling Stones’ 2019 ‘No Filter’ tour, for their sole Canadian
appearance. ( ii ) Bizarrely and by way of direct contrast, The
Beaches provided the pre-game entertainment for the 107th Grey Cup in
Calgary. Strange but true, so please trust me.
After
recording two more EP’s, the band announced that their second album
‘Blame My Ex’ would be ready for September 2023. From this album, the
band released as a single ‘Blame Brett’ (which was based on the
relationship break up of Jordan Miller and Brett Emmons of The Glorious
Sons), and this emulated ‘T Shirt’ by reaching No. 1 on Canada’s
Billboard Rock Chart. Success seemed to follow the band in that
‘Blame My Ex’ was not only shortlisted for, but also won the Juno Award
for Rock Album of the Year. ‘Blame Brett’ went viral on Tik Tok. It
was described by Billboard as “poppier than their previous releases,
with the heavy guitar tone swapped for reverb”. The single received
airplay on Sirius channels, and was also played by many American
Terrestrial radio stations. Mainly due to the success of this single
and album, the band embarked on a North American tour in 2023,
including a performance at the World–famous Lollapalooza. The tour was
mostly sold out and introduced a much younger audience to them.
Broadly speaking, I remember the self-same thing happening to my hero
John Peel. In his ‘punk-loving’ years, the average age of his
audience considerably shrunk, but the actual numbers listening to the
great man at least doubled.
A
Compilation Album called ‘Sisters not Twins’ (The Professional Lovers
Album) won the Juno for Rock Album Of the Year in 2022, which combined
material from their EP’s, ‘The Beaches’, ‘Heights’, ‘The Professional’
and ‘Future Lovers’, and this compilation was well received by the
music press and fans alike. In addition to the three albums and four
EP’s, the band have released sixteen singles and nineteen official music videos. Their music genre has been described as “Indie
rock – dance rock – post punk revival – garage rock revival”, but I
would simply put them in my “good” category. The track I have asked
Lex to play is the live Coal Sessions version of ‘If a tree falls’,
originally from their second album ‘Blame my Ex’, and this can be found
here.