The Beaches are embracing reinvention, with a darker sound, fresh hairdos, and a new single, ‘Jocelyn’ — all while shaking off the “Canadian curse” and conquering new horizons. Check out the latest cover story for our New Music Friday playlist edit, PLAY.
Words: Abigail Firth.
Photos: Patrick Gunning.
Perhaps the best indicator of any artist’s new era is a new hairdo, so naturally, Jordan Miller, leader of Canadian rock outfit The Beaches, has turned up for the band’s Reading Festival debut with a fresh set of extensions and a darker dye job. The change came just before the four-piece headlined their biggest-ever show, a hometown stop at the 16,000 cap Budweiser Stage in Toronto, the day before jetting across the Atlantic for a sold-out UK run. But the band’s reinvention extends further back than a hair change.
Almost exactly a year ago, they released their second album ‘Blame My Ex’, which catapulted them beyond Canada’s borders with its lead single ‘Blame Brett’, a tongue-in-cheek breakup banger about badly navigating the dating world and becoming a bit of an arse after a nasty split.
“Oh, our lives have completely changed for the better, obviously,” says Kylie Miller, guitarist and sister of Jordan (who can’t chat today because she’s on vocal rest). “People around the world, not just the country that we’re from, started listening to our music and discovering our band, and it’s been an absolute trip.”
‘Blame Brett’ and their real breakthrough came six years after their debut album ‘Late Show’, which was released in 2017 when they were a very different band. ‘Late Show’ lived in the world of early-2000s garage-rock, borrowing sounds from female-fronted bands of the era like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Metric, with a dusting of bluesier tones from bands like The Black Keys. Several musical forays later, and ‘Blame My Ex’ hung onto The Beaches’ early ferocity and cleaned up the influences to create something janglier, leaning towards 80s British indie and resembling something more like The Smiths, The Cure and The Stone Roses.
“I feel like there’s been many journeys through it all, but I think that we’re all very happy at the place that it’s ended up at,” says drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel. “It feels very cohesive right now, so we’re very happy.”
Jordan, Kylie and Eliza were somewhat child stars in Canada, making up three-quarters of the Family Channel’s (Canada’s Disney Channel equivalent) favourite band, Done With Dolls, way back in 2009. When a spot opened up for a new guitarist in 2013, Leandra Earl joined, they rebranded as The Beaches, and the rest is history.
“We were like twelve at the time when we started playing together,” says Eliza, “In middle school, when I joined the band, I feel like we all just kind of gravitated towards similar stuff and were listening to the same stuff and inspired by the same things.”
While they’re in great company as Canadian female rock stars, walking the path laid by icons like Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne, and have picked up numerous gongs in their home country (including Best Rock Album at the Juno Awards twice!), the band have been vocal about how hard it can be to break out of the Canadian scene.
“It’s the Canadian curse,” says Kylie. “We have a really great system to help support Canadian artists within Canada, but because of that, it’s like a double-edged sword, where it’s really hard to make it outside, and it’s such a competitive market. Even with the States, there are a million bands, and there are so many more people, so you just have to push extra hard in order to get recognised.”
Luckily for them, the UK has welcomed The Beaches with open arms, meaning their UK tour, including the Reading Festival set our chat precedes, plus a sold-out Kentish Town Forum alongside stops in Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol, were the first audiences to hear their new single ‘Jocelyn’, out now.
“We feel like our music has always really connected here,” says Eliza. “It’s always been really easy for us to kind of draw fans here, even when we were first starting; I think you guys love rock music, and that’s really nice to see, and I think really refreshing for us.”
‘Jocelyn’ follows up ‘Takes One To Know One’, the single released this July, and both serve as tasters of what’s coming next. The emotional vulnerability they got into on ‘Blame My Ex’ remains, with both singles unpacking Jordan’s worst traits, or at least how she views herself, ‘Jocelyn’ hitting hardest as she asks a fan (a real one, apparently) why they look up to her. By the sounds of it, the wait between albums will be much shorter this time.
“We’re working on that record right now, a follow-up to ‘Blame My Ex’,” says Kylie. “We’ve been in the studio a lot, and we’re trying to continue to write throughout the rest of the year. We can’t wait for the next era.” ■
Emily Burns’ new track ‘Die Happy’ is out now. Her debut album of the same name is out 8th November 2024. Follow Dork’s PLAY Spotify playlist here.
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