With their third album, No Hard Feelings, the quartet pick up where they left off, the set unfurling as a hard-pop masterclass, song after song carried by well-sculpted instrumentation and Miller’s vocals, which are as sensual, muscular, and nuanced as ever.
Certainly Blame My Ex and the band’s debut, 2017’s Late Show, offered memorable hooks, but with No Hard Feelings, the infectiousness is off the charts. Opener “Can I Call You in the Morning?” reorients us via catchy guitar licks to the band’s new-wave affinities. Miller is immediately alluring, capturing the way we take out our frustrations on those to whom we’re closest and then regret our words and deeds: the cycle of anger and regret that keeps therapists in business and the rooms of Rageaholics Anonymous full to capacity. If Blame My Ex was occasionally a little loose, meandering, here the band is at their most economical, the song whittled to shimmering essentials.
On the more jangly “Did I Say Too Much”, Miller’s voice is husky, libidinous, sounding like a cross between Sarah Mary Chadwick circa Messages to God and “Joey”-era Johnette Napolitano. Built around riffy guitars and spry drums, the piece is guaranteed to raise a smile, even as it addresses the way we often reveal ourselves to people who might not appreciate what we’re saying or keep our confidence.
With No Hard Feelings, the band integrate their leanings toward humor, sarcasm, melancholy, and indignation. Miller’s vocal, in particular, is emotionally complex, though she works with melodies and lyrics designed for maximum palatability. In this sense, The Beaches illustrate, more so than Charly Bliss, Dream Wife, or Wet Leg, the way pop can reconcile paradoxes, working with foreboding, dissonance, and ennui, while never losing sight of the bottom line: getting people to hum along, tap their feet, and replay the track at hand … at least a dozen times. The sugar-coated jagged pill.
“Touch Myself” opens with jangly guitars. A grabby melody. A
hooky transition that culminates with an explosive chorus. All in under
a minute. “I’m scared to even touch myself / ’Cause when I do, oh, I
think of you”, Miller confesses, reveling in romanticism run through a
cynicism filter: love as tragic, unsustainable, desire as destructive.
On “Jocelyn”, the song’s subject is lauded for having
direction and focus (“You just got your PhD in politics”) while the
singer describes herself as “a walking apocalypse”. The melody is
stickier than a glue trap, Miller’s voice exuding boisterousness. At the
same time, darkness, shame, and free-floating fears throb at the song’s
core.
Let’s not forget, though: The Beaches are a pop
band. They’re throwing a party. Someone will probably fall and get a
concussion, someone else will have a meltdown and lock themselves in the
one and only bathroom, but it’s still a party. “Anti-social,
maladjusted, noncommittal, can’t be trusted”, Miller proclaims,
portraying herself as well as someone to whom she’s attracted, at least
for the moment. The humor’s barbed, Miller’s vocal is characteristically
ambivalent; still, absurdity shines through. The persona might be
straight out of Sunset Strip for Dummies or Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company, but the tableau comes to life. The Beaches render the stock attitude and circumstances new.
With No Hard Feelings, The Beaches maintain their
rakish stance. Listeners will sing along, grinning with drink in hand.
And yet, there’s an underlying recognition here, particularly on the
part of Miller: parties end. The most opulent train can go off the
rails. It’s this juxtaposition – brashness and vulnerability, abandon
and a recognition of impermanence – that makes No Hard Feelings an arresting sequence. We get to pretend we’re on vacation; meanwhile, those tectonic plates rumble beneath our feet.
