Picture this: A relationship pulverizes your heart into such itty-bitty fragments, it honest-to-God feels like you’re never going to recover or have feelings for anyone ever again. But rather than wallow, you pour everything into a riotous, infectiously catchy song with a loud, careening chorus where you call your ex out by name — and now, at multiple festivals this summer, you’re surrounded by thousands of people helping you get over it all as they scream along with you.
This is exactly what happened when Canadian band the Beaches wrote their insanely viral hit “Blame Brett,” the first single from their 2023 album Blame My Ex. The song shot up to Number One on Canada’s Billboard rock charts and rocketed the band, who have been together for about 14 years, to new heights. “We were really lucky because by then, we had done so much — so many live performances,” says lead vocalist and bassist Jordan Miller. “That’s where we’re most comfortable as a group: onstage. So we were really ready for it when it happened.” Concerts around the world followed, not to mention all those festivals and legions of devoted new fans. In just a few weeks, they’ll headline night two of Rolling Stone’s Gather No Moss tour in Chicago.
“Blame Brett” was a perfect example of the band’s brutal honesty. Made up of Jordan Miller, backing vocalist and guitarist Kylie Miller (she and Jordan are sisters), plus drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel and keyboardist/guitarist Leandra Earl, they never shy away from vulnerability and directness in their music, which often includes experiences pulled directly from their real lives. Jordan, whose own break-up experience inspired “Blame Brett,” puts it best: “We’re all messy.” She’s quick to amend that, saying, “Well, Eliza’s not messy. But the rest of us are messy enough that there’s a lot of material to pull from for sure.”
Now, they’re getting ready to release No Hard Feelings. Out on Aug. 29, the same day as their Gather No Moss show, it’s a follow-up that leans into those same unapologetic, chaotic feelings from their last LP, but with a sense of clarity that’s come from their growth over the last year. By the time they’d found success with Blame My Ex, the band had been through a lot: getting dropped by two labels, new managers, a different team. Blame My Ex was their first totally independent effort. “It was really scary because we were relying on using our own income to be able to pay for all the songs,” Kylie says. “But it was also such a liberating, fun experience because it’s the first time we didn’t really have to answer to anybody on the label when it came to the kind of music we were making and the sounds that we wanted to pursue.”
They were able to apply a few learning experiences to No Hard Feelings, especially after the attention that came after “Blame Brett.” “When I was writing [‘Blame Brett’], we were still quite small, and I actually named my ex,” Jordan says, noting a kind of parasocial relationship that fans developed with the ex in the song. “On the tour, people were coming up to me and being like, ‘Brett’s a piece of shit! I hope he’s suffering right now! I was like, ‘Oh, it’s OK for me to say these things, but the song is about my behavior, too.’ And I’m in a new relationship now, so I was definitely a little apprehensive at first.”
Despite that apprehension, No Hard Feelings is still a carefree project, filled with humor and levity while touching on the deep universality of love, heartbreak, and new beginnings. “How we got to these stories is what we call ‘The Debrief.’ We were very inspired by Sex and the City, and I love when the center of each narrative of the episodes is the four girls talking at brunch,” Jordan explains. She and her bandmates would pile into a car on the way to a studio and open up to each other. Because they’re so close, tons of funny anecdotes and intimate feelings came out.
That’s how songs like the upbeat “Touch Myself” came together. Leandra had just broken up with her girlfriend, working through all the grief and drama that comes at the end of a relationship. “I was still fresh in my breakup that was killing me. I was telling Jordan and Kiley, ‘I’m too sad to masturbate since the break-up,’” she says, laughing now. “But then I was like, ‘Oh, you know what, guys? For the first time last night, I had a hot and sexy dream about Jeremy Allen White, and it was the first time in months I had felt hot and bothered. We took that to our producers, and they loved that story, and it became a song about being too sad to masturbate.”
In addition to that honesty, so much of what sets the Beaches apart is that they’re also extremely tight musicians who play with an almost telepathic connection. “We’ve been professional musicians and at least three of us have been playing together since middle school,” Kylie says. “We’ve always been really close and had this strong friendship that has been the center of our group, our music, and our experience. I think when people come to see us on stage, one of the things that they really notice is the intense connection that we have with one another.”
They’ve also found a way to blend loud rock sounds with neon-bright hooks and choruses that will likely live rent-free in your head for months. Kylie, Eliza, and Leandra are power musicians, often providing an impenetrable strong backdrop for Jordan, whose acrobatic voice and impressive vocal control has a pop sheen to it. That comes from their long list of inspirations; Kylie lists off Depeche Mode and the Cure, but a huge one they all share is Avril Lavigne. “I remember I was in grade two when her first record came out, and it was such a powerful, evocative thing to see,” Jordan adds. “A woman with a guitar. It’s kind of like seeing a woman with a sword for the first time.”
Eliza adds that they felt an especially close kinship to Avril’s music because she was from Ontario, not far from their own hometown in Toronto: “There weren’t that many Canadian artists at that time that crossed over into global pop, and to see someone do that was so inspirational. It’s like, ‘Oh, this girl grew up two hours away from us and everybody around the world is singing her songs.’”
These days, they’ve formed deep bonds with other female- and queer-led rock groups. They’re tight with the Aces, who they opened for a while back, and they’ve played a few festivals with the Last Dinner Party. At Coachella, their good friend and collaborator G Flip, who co-produced and co-wrote their song “Last Girls at the Party,” came out and danced onstage. “We were like, ‘Just come dance,’ because they’re one of our best friends in this industry, and it was just fun to have them up there,” Kylie says.
The new album also comes with more surprises and more shows, of course. They are getting together a tour that includes a few “bucket-list venues,” like the Wilton in Los Angeles and Webster Hall in New York. All of it represents how much the band has grown — and how far their friendship and musicianship has brought them. “Two years ago, we’re playing to, like, seven people in Colorado and now we have these huge venues,” Kylie says. “It’s always a ‘pinch me’ moment.”