BEACH SLANG

return with new single

‘BAM RANG RANG’

& announce 2020 album

‘THE DEADBEAT BANG OF HEARTBREAK CITY’

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“No band shows more belief in punk rock as an agent of social change.” – Pitchfork

“The band is a testament to what can be done with nothing but a few chords in a garage—living proof that rock and roll is still alive and that any band has a shot at it.” – Vice

“Beach Slang are the kind of band you want to belt out every word to, preferably while showering yourself with a keg of beer.”
 – The Guardian

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Notice that loud buzzing in your ears? That’s the sound of Philadelphia punk rock icons Beach Slang making their long-awaited return, cranking their amps up to 11, and ready to release their first new music in three years, beginning right now with the new single, ‘Bam Rang Rang.’

The single, which premiered overnight on Kerrang!, is pure Beach Slang – unadulterated celebration rock, crammed into 3:33mins, and literally counting down to detonation.

As always, the band is lead by heart-on-your-sleeve hero James Alex, who has spent the last few years reimagining the power anthems that won them international fandom with his Quiet Slang project, replacing Marshall stacks and the glowing red lights from Big Muffs and DS-1s with acoustic strums, piano keys and cello bows.

On ‘Bam Rang Rang,’ though, James & Co. are back to their ear-bleeding best, the new single acting as a call to arms for the legion of punk rock die-hards they initially woke from their slumber when they unexpectedly exploded from the Philadelphia punk rock scene in 2014. It’s the first taste of their thrilling new album, The Deadbeat Bang Of Heartbreak City (the most perfect Beach Slang album name if there ever was one), which is set for release January 10, 2020.

Having the distortion pedals cranked isn’t the only element that makes this new single a special moment. Across the life of the Beach Slang,  James Alex has always proudly worn his influences like a badge of honour, from Jawbreaker and Cheap Trick, through to his most immediate influence in all-time favourite artists, The Replacements. That fandom now turns into collaboration, with legendary ‘Mats (and Guns ’N’ Roses) bassist, Tommy Stinson, playing bass on the new album.

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Beach Slang has also had a long love affair with Australian audiences, with triple j and community radio stations like FBi, Triple R and 4ZZZ being early and loud champions of the group. The band toured the country in 2016 as part of the Splendour In The Grass line-up, and performed barnstorming shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

For a band that’s only five years old, Beach Slang’s story is already the stuff of legend. In 2014, James released two EPs, Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken and Cheap Thrills On a Dead End Street. Having earned his bona fides from two decades in cult, pop – punk outfit Weston, James never fully considered Beach Slang a viable project until Pitchfork and tastemakers praised the EPs. Drawing comparisons to Jawbreaker and The Replacements, but never approaching easy facsimile, Beach Slang paid tribute to the past by lighting a new torch. For those of us who worship at the altar of Paul Westerberg and classic alternative, we got it right away, and if you haven’t heard ‘All Fuzzed Out’ off Cheap Thrills, drop everything and do it now.

Two critically-acclaimed albums followed, The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us in 2015 and (triple j Feature Album) A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings the following year, in which James continued to explore the psychic wounds of people who burn too bright. As road warriors, with James in his ruffled suit and bulls-eye heart, Beach Slang turned any skeptics into hardcore believers with each show. It sounds like hyperbole, but every Slang performance oozes with the sweat – drenched energy and fevered reverence of a Sunday sermon. And then, with the last headlining tour in December 2017, there was relative quiet on the Beach Slang front. But, that’s where The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City was slowly coming to life.

“I would say it has the most personal songs,” says James from his home base in Philadelphia. “It really steps outside of what people might consider the Beach Slang sound…or maybe it doesn’t.” Like all Beach Slang albums, the eleven tracks on Deadbeat Bang are all written by James. The record was mixed by heavy-hitter Brad Wood, celebrated for his work with the Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair. “Brad is a great, big hero of m ine,” says James. “And the most brilliant, patient, explorative, boundary – pushing, mind – flipping, sonic genie I’ve ever worked with. Cross my heart, I’ll never make another record without him. He is the absolute goods.

The band has always had a revolving door of players, but this record features a VERY special guest bassist in Stinson. “It was a real-life rock & roll daydream come true ,” says James. “I played in the studio with Tommy. We were standing two feet from each other, rocking out these songs that I wrote. We shared a bottle of bourbon the whole time.” Save for Tommy, the assured drum work of Cully Symington, and the auxiliary strings and horns, all of the instrumentation was performed and arranged by James.

“There was no ‘working it out,’ says James. “We went into the studio and did it. There was no pre-production. This record went from guitar-vocals-demos that I made straight into the studio. Everything was on-the-fly in the studio, which is about as much from-the-gut as it gets. The writing was really thoughtful, but the execution was devil-may-care.”

The Deadbeat Bang Of Heartbreak City is available for pre-order HERE

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AMNPLIFY – DB