Release Date: October 20, 2015
It seems like the title of Beach Slang’s new album The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us explains so much about how we, as humans, wander around the world and try to find our people. The folks listening to The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us need look no further. This is a study on the people who don’t necessarily fit in, the ones who survive purely on what they feel and not on what is expected of them. Beach Slang singer and songwriter James Alex penned ten punk rock feel-good songs directed specifically at nostalgia, the “good old days,” and never letting go of those memories.
Some may argue that hanging onto memories of a younger self is a waste of time. But Alex sang, “Take down your hair, wake up the night,” in the anthemic “Young & Alive.” Alex doesn’t always write about his earlier years, though. In “Too Late To Die Young,” he sets up a scene of a euphoric moment where he wanders around late at night. He sings, “There’s honesty in these neon lights/We’re animals drunk and alive/I swear, right now I’m alright.”
Even though there are so many moments of utter elation of The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, it’s hard not to notice the weariness running through some of Alex’s lyrics. You can hear this in “Throwaways” when he sings, “No, these streets don’t feel like home/They’re not hungry or wild enough/It’s a dead-end town for trash like us/But I’ve got a full tank and a couple bucks/I mean I never got nothing and I never wanted much/But man, we gotta get out.”
Alex has written to the jaded person that lingers inside all of us. We’re all human.
Alex follows the “nothing is perfect” aesthetic and sings about it in “Noisy Heaven.” “The night is alive, it’s loud, and I’m drunk/Kissing the mic and singing about us/The songs that I make, I barely rehearse them/They’re hardly mistakes, they’re meant to be honest.” Alex has said he and his music are far from perfect, and he likes to keep it that way. He’s not concerned about being “technically precise.” If only the all too self-aware and annoyingly serious musicians could take note of Alex’s philosophy.
If anything, The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us is an investigation into the psyche of someone who hasn’t let go of what he felt when he was a younger person. Alex teaches us that we can’t let go of what drives us to feel alive and to be alive.
Beach Slang – The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us tracklist:
- “Throwaways”
- “Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas”
- “Noisy Heaven”
- “Ride The Wild Haze”
- “Too Late To Die Young”
- “I Break Guitars”
- “Young & Alive”
- “Porno Love”
- “Hard Luck Kid”
- “Dirty Lights”
