Beach Slang, Spiral Heads, Fat Heaven

Beach Slang

Spiral Heads, Fat Heaven

Saint Vitus Bar
Ages 21+
TONIGHT! TUES 10/22. Bar opens at 6. Doors at 7. Tickets available at doors. Set times: 745 Fat Heaven 830 Spiral Heads 930 Beach Slang

First there's the choppy E chord, revving the song like a boot stomping a gas pedal: the sound of all that excess energy built up at the start of the night. Then comes James Alex's fine-grain sandpaper voice: "Play it loud, play it fast / Play me something that will always last / Play it soft, play it quiet / Play me something that might save my life..."

James Alex, songwriter and front man for Philly indie-punk outfit Beach Slang, knows wherefrom he sings. Like a lot of us, Alex is that kid Lou Reed sang about, the one whose life was saved by rock and roll. And A Loud Bash Of Teenage Feelings (Polyvinyl), Beach Slang's second full-length, is just that -- a crash-and-thunder collection of songs about what it takes to keep yourself going, to make it through the rest of the night -- hell, through the rest of your youth -- and beyond.

Coming off a string of acclaimed EPs, Beach Slang's first album, 2015's The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, won remarkably effusive acclaim from a number of critics, and wound up on several "best-of-the-year" lists. James wrote much of A Loud Bash Of Teenage Feelings on that album's support tour, during which he spent a lot of time with the kids who'd picked up the record.

"A lot of the songs [on Loud Bash] are the stories of the kids who got turned on to Beach Slang by the first album," says Alex. "They're autobiographical, too, but kind of at a remove -- I'm not that young kid anymore, but I used to be. You know how it is; rock and roll is a new crop of 15-year-olds picking up guitars every year and having at it. There was something really cool about documenting someone else’s life, but seeing myself in it. I suppose that's why we connect. We're all kind of one big gang."

Going into the second record, Alex didn't feel a sense of pressure to match the broad, unexpected success of the first. "What I did feel was a sense of responsibility to the kids who told me they were finding something in our music that brought them back from a bad place, the ones who were getting Beach Slang tattoos and quoting lyrics to me after the shows. I don't want to let those people down. As a 20-year-old, I thought, hey, let's all have fun, we're gonna live forever. You don't really see the finish line. Now it's more like, am I leaving behind work that's going to matter? What's this going to say about me when I run out of air, and my son is listening to these records and tapes that I left behind. Is he going to say, "Yeah, my dad was all right"? These days I feel like I'm responsible for things bigger than myself. And I want to do right by them."

Indeed, Alex is that rare songwriter who can create songs that blend his own Young Man Blues with the grown man's earned perspective. Check the arresting "Punks In A Disco Bar" and "Spin The Dial" for his skill at merging full-throttle hooks with memorable, whip-smart lyrics, or "Art Damage" and "Wasted Daze Of Youth" for a lesson in how rock and roll can be sinister and dissonant, and still end up beautiful.


I have a full, beautiful life. But you know how some people have the 'god hole'? I have the rock and roll hole. I'm that kid with the posters on his wall. Whether I'm right or I'm wrong, I've convinced myself this is why I'm here." Beach Slang -- plug it in, turn it up, and let it scream.”

Venue Information:
Saint Vitus Bar
1120 Manhattan Ave
Brooklyn, NY, 11222