If you feel embarrassed to identify as a Beach Slang fan in 2020, rest assured that for frontman James Alex, embarrassment is the whole point. He has an umbilical connection to the awkward and tender teenage sentiments of bands like the Replacements or Jawbreaker and he carries the flag for adults who feel ashamed of their younger selves. Most Beach Slang fans would admit that their 2015 debut, The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, was pandering to a certain kind of washed-up rock fan, but hey, at least someone was actually pandering to them.
Coming after nearly four years of lost momentum and squandered goodwill, The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City lacks the near-delusional devotion to the redemptive possibilities of rock music that sustained Beach Slang’s early work. There’s something far less communal at play here: a desperation to keep Beach Slang alive. When Alex shouts “Did you come to watch me choke...again” on “Let It Ride,” he raises the unexpected possibility of finding pathos in all of this—in the shame and moral trade-offs that come with a white-knuckle grip on fleeting relevance, in his own band’s troubled history—the near-breakups, the personnel controversies, the erratic shows, the disdain from peers. Though “Let It Ride” is virtually indistinguishable from 90 percent of other Beach Slang songs—maybe intentionally so—a lyric like “Rock ‘n’ roll’s my favorite sin/Man, I don’t know if I’m good at it/But I’m too in love or dumb to quit” hits differently than any number of Beach Slang lyrics that uses virtually the same exact words. Maybe the backhanded compliments suggesting Alex is willfully dumb or naive were off-base; maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing.
The announcement of lead single “Bam Rang Rang”—basically a repeat of “Atom Bomb,” except twice as long for some reason—accompanied a run of dates opening for the Goo Goo Dolls, a band whose pre-“Name” Westerberg cosplay is a more apt reference point for Beach Slang than the Mats themselves. After years of writing de facto Replacements fanfic, Alex actually rips off the one Replacement song about fanfic itself with “Tommy in the ’80s.” “I figured if Westerberg could write about Alex Chilton, for all those right reasons, I could write something about Tommy Keene for all the same ones,” Alex explained, preemptively correcting a valid assumption that “Tommy in the ‘80s” is about Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson—now an actual member of Beach Slang—and saving the thing from total contextual collapse. He is also the only artist in 2020 still namedropping Fast Times at Ridgemont High and “Jessie’s Girl” as fresh sources of inspiration. Imagine what life could be like if you could silence your inner (or outer) critic the way Alex does. It’s kind of inspiring.
On the other hand, a little self-censoring could prevent Alex from continuing to try his hand at modes almost completely incompatible with his strengths. On past albums, his stabs at shoegaze and chamber-pop were endearingly clumsy nudges against Beach Slang’s hard limitations. But the mismatch is even more pronounced on The Deadbeat Bang’s attempts at glam, a subversive subgenre by definition that requires sex or sneer to pull off, while all Alex has to work with is his adamantine earnestness. Best case scenario, he’s able to turn out something as lovably goofy as Def Leppard’s “Rocket,” but “Sticky Thumbs” and “Born to Raise Hell” are passable facsimile at best, and the nicest thing you can say about “Stiff” is that it isn’t called “Moist.” I’m not sure who was asking for a six-minute piano ballad or more acoustic solo tracks after Quiet Slang, and yet here are “Bar No One” and “Nobody Say Nothing,” both notable solely for isolated moments of real human interactions strewn amongst the garden-variety Beach Slang-isms (“I’m murdering songs on a dead guitar,” “I’m a skeleton wrapped in gasoline”).
The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City is too harmless to hate, but it’s hard to feel much of anything about it—which is a fatal flaw for a band that leverages an uncanny ability to rid people of inhibitions against their better judgment. This is why the soused, sudsy production of The Things We Do is much better suited to them than the polished professionalism of Brad Wood. Ever since Beach Slang made its name on making people feel seen, everything they’ve done since had one job, and it’s one that The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City barely accomplishes: to make us feel like we weren’t suckers for believing in the first place.
Buy: Rough Trade
