For as much as I loved Cheap Thrills on a Dead End Street and Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken?, Beach Slang’s twin 2014 EPs, I recently learned that I didn’t actually know that much about the Philadelphia punks. You see, I was under the impression that frontman James Snyder was around my age (I’m 24). The band’s young-and-alive, heart-on-sleeve lyrics had led me to believe that this was the work of a millennial with an old soul, aping anachronistic acts like The Replacements and Jawbreaker to capture some kind of bygone youth.
I knew Snyder used to be in a band called Weston, but when I looked them up, I found out he’d been in the band since 1992. This meant that he was actually over 40 and has been playing music professionally for exactly one year less than I’ve been alive. I felt betrayed. I’m pretty sure I called him a “narc” at least once. And, most regrettably, I announced to my girlfriend my intention to give The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us, Beach Slang’s full-length debut, a scathing review.
You see, I felt that now Snyder’s sincerity was insincere, nothing more than the Peter Pan longings of an aging punk trying to find his place in a younger crowd. I criticized his lyrics for being simplistic, and I compared them to Cameron Crowe’s much-maligned, overly saccharine rom-com Elizabethtown.
But then I asked myself, what kind of a cynical jerk would I be for criticizing someone for sincerity? Isn’t that what we ask for from our rock bands? How had I become so jaded that I was criticizing someone almost twice my age on his worldview?
I listened to The Things We Do again, and while the earnestness was still there — and still occasionally cringe-inducing, I’m not backing down on that — it took on a different meaning. Maybe Snyder’s enthusiasm was closer to wistfulness. Maybe it seemed anachronistic because it was — he’s roughly twice the age of most people in his scene. And maybe it was so broad because it was meant to be relatable — enough so that I could mistake James Snyder for a Nineties kid, when he actually spent most of that decade playing alongside the bands I love.
When you look at it like that, The Things We Do is an entirely different record, and it’s entire statement can be found in “Too Late to Die Young,” the orchestral-tinged acoustic number. It’s essentially the hangover of youth, a fleeting realization that, “Oh shit, I’m going to get old and I’m going to die.” Really, it’s the album’s focal point, hitting on every feeling that makes Beach Slang grating, beautiful, and — above all else — human.
Yes, Snyder’s lyrics can be overly sincere, and they’re pretty much the only thing keeping me from calling this album a masterpiece. But the fact that it’s so perfectly imperfect, able to make me both love and hate it in the span of a half hour, says something. Good or bad, The Things We Do is the most emotional album of the year. The emotion, however, is up to you.