Breakthrough moment:
The Beaches at Massey Hall
In a pivotal concert, Canada’s best band kicked open the door to the world
Kylie Miller is in her office, an area stage right in Toronto’s Massey Hall that serves as her creative cube. Bathed in swirls of spotlights and lasers, she’s dressed for work: black slip dress, Doc Martens, and a beautiful Paul Reed Smith guitar that she slashes away at like it’s a toy. She’s bouncing, dancing, flying, even sashaying as she drinks in the crowd’s energy and lets it vibrate through her.
Her band, The Beaches, is halfway through a blistering version of “Cigarette,” a come-back-to-life-after-breakup song that romps along at 190 beats per minute, propelled by the seismic force of Eliza Enman-McDaniel’s elemental percussion.
Jordan Miller, Kylie’s sister and the band’s lead singer and bassist, is swooning at the mike, delivering the song’s orgasmic chorus — “Yes, yes, yes!” — from a place deep inside her, a place once shattered by a former lover, now healed. “I’ll stay forever on your lips — YES!”
Jordan’s affirmations launch guitarist/keyboardist Leandra Earl into a backward pirouette to the drum riser, where she and Enman-McDaniel tunnel into the manic pace and share a laugh. Earl is the band’s sonic and social provocateur, dropping psychedelic synth lines, angular piano shards, and biting guitar riffs into The Beaches’ roiling pop brew.
It’s November 1, 2023. This is the band’s first of two back-to-back sold-out shows at Canada’s most revered venue, where Neil Young cut a legendary live album in 1971 and where Canadian rock gods Rush practically made their home. But tonight, every inch of the grand hall belongs to these four extraordinary women. Playing at the top of their form before a hometown crowd, The Beaches are having a moment.
Playing at the top of their form before a hometown crowd, The Beaches are having a moment.
“I wrote this song about social anxiety,” says Jordan Miller to introduce “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Paranoid” from the band’s latest album, Blame My Ex. Tall, willowy, and wearing a white floor-length silk skirt slit to the thigh, Jordan looks like the least socially anxious person among the 3,000 or so in attendance. “Fuck social anxiety, am I right?” she asks as the crowd roars back its assent.
Miller starts the song in a low moan that rises two octaves over her sister’s staccato strum:
“I think I’m becoming a conspiracy theorist.
Everyone says that love exists
But I think that it’s a myth.”
Lyrically mature and delivered with heartfelt finesse, the song reflects the freefall of self-doubt that often accompanies a brutal breakup. The pre-chorus reads like a transcript of Miller’s inner monologue:
“Why are they staring?
Am I oversharing?
I’m so embarrassing.”
“Paranoid” encapsulates the band’s heady take on the pop form. It’s a melodic tour de force, starting low, slow, and spare before rising and breaking into an edgy anthemic chorus that Miller tinges with angst and frustration as the crowd sings along:
“What doesn’t kill you
What doesn’t kill you
What doesn’t kill you makes you paranoid”
Here’s where The Beaches’ magic happens. The band flips on a dime and soars into a rising choral interlude of syncopated, Beach Boys-inspired “ahs” supported by Enman-McDaniel’s thundering kick and snare.
The effect is like freeing a box of doves at a coronation. The song’s tension breaks as Miller leads the crowd in a sing-along that exorcises paranoia and doubt. Kylie Miller and Earl fill the space between each verse with a jangly phrase that would make the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn smile. The crowd sings and waves their arms like wheat in the wind.
There are many such moments throughout the evening as the band careens through a set rife with the pain of heartbreak juxtaposed with the joyful self-knowledge that can replace it. Nowhere is this more evident than in their viral hit single “Blame Brett,” which, as the set closer at Massey, has the crowd on its feet, dancing and screaming along.
The song is a rapid-fire, tongue-in-cheek reflection on what’s left after a heart-rending breakup. Based on Jordan Miller’s split from Brett Emmons of The Glorious Sons, it warns future lovers that Miller is not OK.
“I’m sorry in advance
I’m only gonna treat you bad
I’m probably gonna let you down
I’m probably gonna sleep around”
And it gets funnier:
“So sorry in advance
Before you take off your pants
I wouldn’t let me near your friends
I wouldn’t let me near your dad
But don’t blame me, blame Brett
Blame my ex, blame my ex, blame my ex”
Delivered at a breakneck pace against Enman-McDaniel’s almost regimental drive, the song hits like a jackhammer. This is a pop breakup song conveyed with the power and urgency of Tom Petty’s “I Need to Know,” and composed with the same airtight structure. It’s not just music with a hook; it’s grab-you-by-the-throat pop that is impossible to resist.
“Blame Brett” isn’t just music with a hook, it’s grab-you-by-the-throat pop that is impossible to resist.
Most bands would be lucky to write one song like “Blame Brett” in their careers, but The Beaches’ catalog (which consists of two LPs and a handful of EPs) is littered with them. All the band members contribute to the writing, and they’ve been helped along the way by solid producers. Gus van Go and Lowell did the honors on Blame My Ex, and Emily Haines and James Shaw of Metric twiddled the knobs on the band’s previous LP, Late Show.
Much has been written about The Beaches, and their history in Canada is well known: born from the ‘tween punk-pop band Done With Dolls when the Miller sisters and Enman-McDaniel were 12 and 13 years old, their sound changed dramatically in 2013 with the arrival of Earl. Now, eleven years in, with a heavy international touring schedule and a handful of Juno Awards under their belts, they’re poised to make the Big Leap.
But first, there’s business to attend to at Massey Hall. Back onstage for their final encore, The Beaches tear into “Money,” a driving lament about being broke and wanting to go out.
At this point in the evening, their clothes soaked with sweat and grinning from ear to ear, the group roars like a vintage sports car on a hot summer day. Enman-McDaniel pushes the band hard, her candy-red hair swinging in time as Kylie Miller hops and spins and pulls devastating solos out of her guitar. Her sister attacks the mike laughing as she trolls through the lyrics. Earl, clad in a black t-shirt, black leather pants, and Chuck Taylors, seems to be everywhere but winds up on top of a splayed Jordan Miller as the song ends, kissing her deeply as their instruments slam together. The crowd erupts, the band takes a woozy victory bow, and the evening comes to a glorious end.
“Every day this year has been a pinch-me moment,” Jordan Miller wrote later to the band’s 215,000 TikTok followers. “We’re incredibly grateful.”
