James Alex talks covering Jawbreaker and reviving Weston at the Fest and why Beach Slang is like John Hughes plus Bukowski plus Paul Westerberg.
Beach Slang is about to release one of the year’s best punk albums and frontman James Alex is getting excited. After toughing it out in under-appreciated bands (like ‘90s pop-punks Weston) his latest project is getting some serious traction. For Beach Slang’s debut album, Alex set out to write the best songs of his life, and on The Things We Do to Find People Like Us, he did just that.
Alex stopped by the Alt In Our Stars podcast to chat about the lyrics and influences on the new album (out Oct. 30 on Polyvinyl), which led to some loving talks on Jawbreaker, old school Goo Goo Dolls, and the Replacements. “I think to myself, how would Bukowski put language to this?,” he says. “What chords would Westerberg put behind it? And then it’s a Beach Slang song.”
And guess what? He’s already working on the next album: “I have the skeleton of half the record for LP two… I can’t write songs so well when we’re on tour, but I can write lyrics really well… You’re traveling around in that Kerouac-ian headspace… I really was trying to write songs, at least getting melody lines -- rough demos like that -- that I could take on tour, and then put words to them.”
Previous Episodes: Bully | Majical Cloudz | The Wonder Years
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