#22 - Beach Slang - The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us

Beach Slang - The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us 

Polyvinyl, 2015

Every once in a while an album just knocks you out. There’s the thrill of discovery, I talk about that ad nauseam in this list, but sometimes a record just gets you in the right place at the right time and all of a sudden you’re on the floor. The feeling this one gave me was the same one I felt when I heard The Exploding Hearts Guitar Romantic for the first time. Those guys weren’t reinventing the wheel, but their songs were pure, undiluted rock and roll joy (which is what made the majority of that band getting killed in a van accident one of the most heartbreaking tragedies on par with the Day the Music Died). What James Alex is doing here, it’s a lot of Replacements, it’s a little Big Star, it’s all lightning in a bottle. Pure punk anthems that grab you by the throat as often as they grab you by the heart. One thing I love about this album is the perfect sequencing of the first five songs. From the fist-pumping opener “Throwaways” which is the perfect thesis statement for what this album is (“It’s a dead-end town for trash like us/ But I’ve gotta full tank and a couple bucks”) to the “Here Comes a Regular” vibes of “Too Late to Die Young” that is one of those songs that is perfectly designed to finish the A-Side (my favorite songs of the 2010s list isn’t set in stone yet, but that one is a no-doubter). This music is just so damn earnest, and that’s so refreshing when so many bands are content to posture and play it cool. It’s a big reason why that modern post-punk stuff doesn’t do it for me, and why this throwback power-pop-punk-emo is the stuff I want to listen to forever.