The debut self titled album by Beaches is a journey into the sublime. Twelve songs born out of sprawling jams, chiselled into rough-diamond perfection, laden with cosmic guitar stretches, vast textures, conjuring voices and phantom frequencies. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, the five women of Beaches have created a psych-rock epic, steeped in the imagery of the natural and temporal world.
Beaches was born of humble intentions, an unmeditated dialogue between friends fuelled by the joy of playing together. After nine months of occasional jams, the band played their first show in October 2007 and have since built an avid following for their trancelike, sonic overdrive live shows. Beaches have played festivals such as All Tomorrows Parties, Big Day Out, Laneway and Meredith Music Festival, with support slots for the likes of Mogwai and Ten East.
Beaches are Antonia Sellbach (Love of Diagrams) on guitar and vocals, Alison Bolger (Panel of Judges) on guitar and vocals, Ali McCann on guitar and vocals, Gill Tucker (Spider Vomit) on bass and vocals and Karla Way on drums and vocals. The album was recorded by Jack Farley in Melbourne and mastered by Bob Weston in Chicago and features songwriting by all five band members.
The band’s communal creative processes are collaborative and intuitive, a shared stream of consciousness and subconsciousness which allows each member’s textural layers and sonic harmonics to emerge and merge into the whole. The stylistic shades reflect the shared musical loves of Beaches, from 1960s hit parades to 1970s psychedelia, shoegaze to prog, southern boogie to krautrock. Yet Beaches transcend their influences to create something wholly new. Partly inspired by naturist poetry, the lyrics are almost entirely based in nature; the only manmade objects appearing on the album are a mansion, a car, and an arrow.
The music of Beaches swells. It ebbs. It is already swept away on the next high tide.
