We had the opportunity to interview The Beaches!
Videos by American Songwriter
“There has always been an undeniable, almost preternatural connection between The Beaches and music. Each member of the Toronto garage rock group remembers being drawn to their instrument casually until developing a specific, important need to create and perform their own work.
Miller sisters Jordan and Kylie remember picking up the guitar as young as six years old, eventually going to practices together. Jordan admits that Sheryl Crow’s appearance on Kid Rock’s “Picture” was her inspiration to learn how to strum. Soon, the pair would find themselves immersed in their own original works. “We ended writing songs at an early age and found a passion for that,” Kylie says. Eliza Enman-McDaniel remembers being taught the guitar by her father at a young age, too. Her curiosity grew and from there she discovered other instruments, most importantly the drums, which she says she found in the comfort of her grandmother’s home. “My grandmother had a drum kit in her basement so I was able to go next door and play whenever I wanted, jamming on my own,” she says. And Leandra Earl had a connection so profound to the piano that, after 12 years of playing, she was going to dedicate her postsecondary education to classical piano.
The sisters Miller, along with Eliza, would eventually become a band – a best friend’s dream. Casually, one day, while walking to school, Jordan and Kylie asked if Eliza would be interested in joining their band. “She came to our studio and we ended up jamming together. The three of us have been playing ever since then,” Kylie explains. The trio would then be in another band at the time called Done With Dolls—a pop punk creation by Disney affiliate, Family Channel. But, as Kylie explains, it really wasn’t exactly they wanted to do long-term. “In high school we decided to change our sound and the name of the band and that’s when we got our friend Leandra to join,” she says.
This is the genesis of The Beaches. There is a real and important specialness to a group of young girls being drawn to rock and pop music as a creative pursuit. Their love of the genre and of forming a real relationship with their instruments—eventually foundational for their enormous fan base—was clear from the beginning.
Named appropriately after the Toronto neighbourhood they all hail from, The Beaches is as authentically rock ‘n’ roll as it comes. Their 70s aesthetic, vivacious attitude, and electrifying sounds all fit harmoniously in a modern rock context. Rock music is an experience; it’s a visceral reaction to a moment, emotion, or a mood. And all of that is all built upon the foundation of live performance. The Beaches prioritize and emphasize instruments, not backing tracks, when they are onstage, beckoning their audience to go on a hypnotic journey only live music can accomplish. “When people come see us live, they are only going to hear that live version of the song,” Jordan says. “It’s going to be slightly different each time. And that’s sort of a powerful thing to experience.”
The Beaches released their sizzling debut LP, Late Show, in October 2017 via Universal Music Canada. Late Show is representative of the band’s unity. After some time spent in Los Angeles, working on other tracks with a variety of rock and pop producers, The Beaches came back to Toronto, bringing the lessons of those sessions back with them. Working with Toronto Aughts rock legends Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw of Metric—and occasional Broken Social Scene members—The Beaches were able to truly define themselves as a rock ‘n’ roll project on their own turns. They are a fusion of past and present, defiantly placing them in a modern and future context where rock prevails.
Now, on their newest EP, The Professional, out May 16, The Beaches have further evolved as songwriters and musicians. On The Professional, the band worked with legendary producer Garrett “Jacknife” Lee. Lee has worked with important modern pop and rock musicians like The Killers, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, and U2, as well as produced Taylor Swift’s eponymous 2012 record, Red. “We pulled from a lot of different influences because [Lee] is such a talented musicians and pulls from so many different genres of music,” Kylie explains. “We referenced Blur, obviously The Strokes are big for us. We were also listening to James Brown and a lot of 70s funk records. We listened to David Bowie.” For “Fascination,” Jordan says she listened to and referenced The Bangles a bit, tapping into all-girl band rock history.
Kylie continues: “[This EP is] definitely an evolution for us because it was a bit more of a collaborative experience, which we enjoy doing. Lee is such a lovely person and I feel like we all learned a lot about writing and music and grew as a band.”
Lee, who had never been up to Toronto before in this capacity, worked on a couple songs with a group in the city. But the band, traveling back to Los Angeles for the first time since their early years trying on songs written by others, wrote the majority of the EP at Lee’s Topanga Canyon house. Perhaps there is a touch of California’s breeziness woven through this latest EP.
There is an admirable quality for making music and creating a space for an audience to find themselves in based on your own positive experiences in the genre. For The Beaches, rock is refuge. And this is exactly what they are providing now to a new generation of hungry fans.”
“Always trust your gut instinct because you are the one that has to go on stage and perform that material and you have to own up to it.”
— The Beaches
