Beaches / She Beats LP Vinyl

Second album for sprawling Melbourne psych-rock quintet Beaches. 

Their self-titled debut emerged in 2008 (on Mistletone Records) and made the Australian Music Prize shortlist for that year, also featuring in 2010 book 100 Best Australian Albums.

The band toured the US twice, played All Tomorrow’s Parties at the invitation of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, released an EP for NYC label Mexican Summer, shared stages with the likes of Roky Erickson, Deerhunter and Wooden Shjips, and even celebrated the birth of beautiful twin daughters to guitarist Alison Bolger.

But a second album was always on the cards. For She Beats, Beaches once again joined forces with producer Jack Farley (Twerps, Scott & Charlenes Wedding). Like its predecessor, the album reflects a love for 60s pop, 70s psych, shoe-gaze, prog, southern boogie and Krautrock, but She Beats is bigger, bolder and more ambitious than the debut.

For one thing, German guitar icon Michael Rother of Neu/Harmonia features on two tracks. The band formed a bond with Rother at ATP in Melbourne in 2009, and he invited himself along to their recording sessions during his next Oz tour in 2012. One of these tracks, the cascading sonic swirl Distance, was premiered in March on Gorilla Vs Bear and has already had more than 50k Soundcloud plays.

Elsewhere, Veda sees the band extending hypnotically eastward, while droning cello scrapes introduce Tanzanite. On the other end of the spectrum, tracks like Send Them Away, Out Of Mind and Runaway are upfront, glorious pop, though still heady with Beaches’ dreamy guitar heroics. All up, She Beats is rich, confident and layered, a multi-dimensional sonic world to get lost in over and over again.