Beach Slang – Cheap Thrills On A Dead End Street

Furthering the trickle of new material marking Beach Slang’s quick rise in popularity, the Philadelphia, PA band follows their debut EP with a second four-song dose of raspy alternative tunes.  Their latest effort, Cheap Thrills On A Dead End Street, comes mere months after their formal introduction and cements the four-piece as a band to watch for on the road to their eventual full length.  The EP offers plenty of fuel for the loose Goo Goo Doll meets Superchunk comparisons that ran rampant during the first wave of reviews, while continuing to placate the hunger of the No Idea Records faithful with vocal likeness to Sunshine State and Leatherface.  

The band’s draw hinges on their cohesive mix of indie, emo and pop-punk, straddling the line between stuck-in-your-head melody and edges rough enough to keep genre veterans enthused.  Opener “All Fuzzed Out” lands with a heavy, south of mid-tempo beat that finds frontman James Snyder’s marching in line with the equally weighted beats of former Ex-Friends drummer Ed McNulty.  Beach Slang’s authority commands a casual assertiveness that cannot be tuned out despite the intentionally murky film muddying the otherwise magnetic atmosphere.  Singing along with crowd pleaser “American Girls And French Kisses” becomes second nature as a blanket of rolling riffs bolden the track-title dominated chorus.  The less remarkable “Dirty Cigarettes” serves as an early intermediary between album highs that showcases the band’s guitar dominated-side taking control in a way that lesser known-acoustic acts Chad Michael Stewart could perhaps benefit from.

The album closes with with the fuzzed out acoustic piece, “We Are Nothing.”  While not nearly as instrumentally gripping as the first three, the takeaway message of raw individualism punches through adamantly in the featured lyric, “we are nothing like them.”  The sentiment doubly describes Beach Slang’s style and early runaway success.  Despite drawing upon a host of elements from like-minded acts, there’s no risk of plagiarism.  Cheap Thrills On A Dead End Street is uniquely Beach Slang – offering up four more tight tunes to a rapidly growing and fulfilling body of work.