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You wouldn't think mindfulness and gratitude would be major points of conversation when talking to the singer of a punk band, but that's exactly what you get from James Snyder of Philadelphia's Beach Slang.
"Last night was a Tuesday. We played a town we'd never been to before, and the room was full," he says. "These are people that are gonna have to go to work tomorrow—not because they love customer service or they want to be doing accounting or something. And here I get to wake up tomorrow, kind of whenever I want to, and I get to play my guitar for a bunch of new friends I'll make in this next city. I have no room to be anything but really sincere in my gratitude for the thing I get to do."
The 40-year-old singer was steeped in the small-club, small-crowd DIY scene while playing in the '90s pop-punk band Weston for over a decade. After the group dissolved in 2001 Snyder resigned to do music as more of a hobby than a paying gig, and took a day job. It was only after a friend, future Beach Slang drummer JP Flexner, urged him to expand on his homemade recordings that Snyder fleshed out the tracks, and found himself with a brand-new band.
Mixing the ramshackle bombast of the Replacements and the earnestness of early '90s emo—delivered via Snyder's Paul Westerberg-meets-Johnny Rzeznik sigh—the sound of Beach Slang is a hodgepodge of old and new. Last year saw the release of two raucous EPs that skyrocketed in popularity over the punk blogosphere, making the band the word-of-mouth Next Big (And Almost Too Good to Be True) Thing. They toured as openers for indie mainstays Cursive, played entire sets of Jawbreaker covers and made direct references to the Smiths in their songs.The drummer's even got a Screeching Weasel tattoo! What more could a punk kid ask for?
Beach Slang released its debut full-length, the excellently titled The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us, on Polyvinyl the day before Halloween, and the band's radical ascent is only increasing. In addition to being praised on the smaller sites and zines, Beach Slang is now enjoying favorable press from major outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
When asked what might be at stake as the band's popularity increases, Snyder pauses.
"We're still in [control] enough that it's still intimate, but yeah, there's that fear," he says. "We come from basement shows and dives, so it's an active pursuit in my mind to not lose that connection and gratitude. I think the Replacements were a great example of that. They were playing these enormous places on their reunion tour but there was still that sort of small-club, imperfect brilliance to it. I just always want it to feel like that." CRIS LANKENAU.
SEE IT: Beach Slang plays Analog Cafe, 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd., with Lithuania, Worriers and Beach Party, on Wednesday, Nov. 11. 6:30 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.
Willamette Week
