Beaches branch out on Professional

No one wants a band to make the same record over and over again to diminishing returns, but the Beaches might have been forgiven if they’d done that with The Professional. After all, the past 24 months have seen the Toronto four-piece gain serious traction with 2017’s Late Show, a record that suggested rock wasn’t as dead as it seems in a world ruled by hip-hop.

On Late Show, the Beaches positioned themselves as capable of holding their own in a knife fight with the Strokes and the Runaways. The album landed the band breakthrough-groupof-the-year honours at the 2018 Junos and made an argument that guitars were cool again.

So how did singer-bassist Jordan Miller, her guitarist sister Kylie, keyboardist Leandra Earl, and drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel decide to follow their breakthrough? That would be by showing they’re not one-trick ponies with The Professional, an EP that serves up disco burners (“Desdemona”), cascading electro-funk (“Want What You Got”), and teardrop postpunk (“Snake Tongue”).

“With Late Show, we knew that audiences had been hearing the songs for a long time,” Jordan says, on the line from her Toronto home. “Some of the songs on that record were five or six years old, so we knew how we wanted them to sound. And the way that we recorded it was all about making those songs sound like they did live. What’s made The Professional a bit more scary but exciting is that they are all brandnew songs, except for maybe ‘Lame’. I’m really curious how people are going to receive them.”

While the Beaches throw the glam stomper “Lame” into the mix to show they haven’t abandoned what got them here, open-minded fans won’t be disappointed. Jordan calls the decision to branch out on The Professional a calculated one; no one in the era of Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music listens to one genre and one genre only, so there’s no point targeting a single audience.

Helping guide the Beaches was Irish producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee, a past collaborator who’s worked with everyone from U2 and the Killers to Bob Moses and Bat for Lashes.

“I had an idea of the direction that I wanted to go, but he really helped us focus,” Jordan says. “When we took in songs like ‘Desdemona’ and ‘Want What You Got’, he was like, ‘Let’s do a rock ’n’ roll dance album.’”

Late Show took the Beaches to places they never dreamed when they began playing music in high school, including opening arena shows for the Rolling Stones and Foo Fighters. Jordan notes that one of the most important pieces of career advice she’s ever received came from Metric’s Emily Haines, who coproduced Late Show.

“She said, ‘If someone is telling you to do something because they think it will make you more money, or garner you more success and attention, don’t do it if it doesn’t feel right. Because at the end of the day, you are the one that’s going to have to perform the material and put your name on it.’ The message was ‘Listen to your gut, because it’s your body of work.’ Because of that, I always trust my instincts now whenever I’m pushing myself. I asked myself, ‘Am I comfortable with these songs?’ when we were working on The Professional. And the answer was ‘Yes, totally.’ ”

The Beaches play the Commodore Ballroom on February 7.