The Beaches

One Liner: Poppy garage rocking ladies

Wikipedia Genre:  Alternative rock
Home: Toronto

Poster Position: 20

Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts: Surprisingly awesome garage rock from a foursome of ladies hailing from Toronto.  You'd be excused for thinking that their most popular track is the Strokes with a deep-voiced lady taking over for Casablancas.  This is "Fascination."

I'm sure they are already super sick of any comparison to any of the other all girl bands out there, but this one, especially the drumming and guitar, reminds me of the GoGos, or like a less hard Donnas.  But this stuff is pretty solidly fun and good.  "Snake Tongue" just made me look up from what I was doing and check the name of the song.  "Desdemona" has a disco rock tilt to it.  And one line (in "T-Shirt") has been running through my head all day, because she said "itty bitty titty committee," which is an amazingly descriptive and titillating line.  But the tunes are catchy and driving rock.  I dig it.

So, the band is four ladies from Toronto, most of whom originally played in a pop punk band called Done with Dolls.  The band name isn't a play on bitches, as I originally (and maybe unfortunately) thought, but instead is the name of the Toronto neighborhood where two of the ladies grew up.  The band's only full-length was produced by the folks from Metric, who are also on the bill for this year's ACL.  They won Breaktrhough Group of the Year from the Juno Awards, and got picked to open for the Stones in their only Canadian stop in 2019.

Not surprisingly, the track with my favorite line is their most streamed tune - "T-Shirt" has 1.7 million streams.

Pretty solid, even before that line about the itty bitties.  The harmony vocals, the good groove, and the good holler-able chorus about not giving back his sweaty t-shirt.

I've been through their tunes twice now - one full album with 2017's Late Show, then a 2019 EP (The Professional) and a 2014 EP called Heights.  Their older stuff is definitely not as good as the full album, you can tell they were still feeling out their identity and weren't quite so confidently ready to rock out.  Sometimes I thought that maybe the lead singer was actually a dude - her voice is definitely at the lower range, but I like it.

I'd go see this.