IN CONCERT
What: The Beaches with Hunny
Where: Capital Ballroom, 858 Yates St.
When: Feb. 6 at 8 (doors at 7)
Tickets: Sold out
Members of Toronto rock group The Beaches have been in Victoria since Sunday, tinkering with production components and rehearsing new songs in advance of what will be the biggest tour of their professional career.
The trek gets underway tonight with a sold-out show at the Capital Ballroom, the first of 17 dates across the country that wraps with three shows in Toronto at the 1,500-capacity Danforth Musical Hall.
Singer-bassist Jordan Miller, 23, is feeling the pressure, but says she is ready to seize the opportunity a headlining tour of Canada provides. “It’s our first tour with a big crew and a bus, so it’s definitely a bigger responsibility,” Miller said. “But it’s also a really great opportunity.”
The Beaches — which also includes keyboardist Leandra Earl, drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel and Miller’s guitar-playing sister, Kylie — has been in its current incarnation since 2013, although its genesis dates back more than a dozen years to when some members were still in middle school.
The band’s tidy brand of straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll scored big two years ago when Money and T-Shirt, two hits from its debut album, Late Show, caught on with audiences. Before long, the twentysomethings were opening for Foo Fighters and the Rolling Stones, followed by a Juno Award in 2018 for breakthrough group of the year.
Tonight’s concert will be the first Beaches performances in Victoria since a 2018 opening set for the Glorious Sons at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. Miller expects to see new faces in the room — the surest sign of progress.
“I think it’s cool to find new people discovering us for the first time. Whether someone has been a fan of ours for a long time or is just discovering our music, it shows that there is a real measurement of success for your band. If you’re able to come up with material that is consistently good for years, you will continue to have new fans and keep the old ones.”
Miller said she’s happy to have new material to play on this tour, noting some songs on Late Show are more than six years old. The stylistic progression on the new EP, The Professional, updates the garage-rock tendencies of Late Show with Blondie’s upbeat syncopation.
To some, it suggested a move into more mainstream waters. Miller disagrees. The Beaches were in good hands with Jacknife Lee, an Irish producer (U2, Snow Patrol) who managed a similar dance-rock balancing act with British band Bloc Party, while it morphed into one of the biggest rock bands in the U.K.
Lee helped the Beaches keep their identity intact, while incorporating their evolving musical tastes.
“If you stick to playing one genre, you run the risk of becoming a little boring, in my opinion,” Miller said. “The Professional is a rock album, but we experimented with the production. We reference David Bowie and some disco music, but at our core, we’re a rock band.
“I maintain that we’re still the freshest rock band in Canada. They are not taking that label away from us.”
