A word to Beach Slang’s agent: you don’t need to yell at them so much, they’re doing fine. The Philadelphian punks group’s singer-guitarist James Alex – a raggedy-voiced dynamo with straggly black hair sweat-matted to his forehead – mentions repeatedly how they’re always getting chewed out by their booker for playing such messy, sprawling shows, involving too much booze and too much talking. It’s an odd complaint, because along with writing songs about rock’n’roll’s eternal power to make weirdos walk tall, that happens to be exactly what makes them such sloppy good fun.
“We’ve only got one song left on the bit of paper,” slurs Alex, glaring at the set list 30 minutes into a gig that will run almost three times that length. They play perhaps just a dozen numbers, including glorious antihero anthems such as Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas and All Fuzzed Out. The rest of the show is spent drinking, hugging fans who shout encouraging things, doing yoga moves, getting a guy called Steve up on stage to sing Jawbreaker’s Boxcar, and, er, more drinking. Guitarist Ruben Gallego also gets involved with a well-received dig at Donald Trump that’s liable to land him on a CIA watchlist.
Beach Slang’s cult appeal is summed up by their debut album’s title: The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us. Their music is indebted to Minneapolis drunk-punks the Replacements, the adoration of whom Alex wears as plainly as one of the pin badges adorning his jacket lapel. They cover Bastards of Young, while Alex pays personal homage to Paul Westerberg by sinking about five beers. They know a lot of covers as it happens, and elsewhere perform half-cocked snippets of everything from Bad to the Bone to Thunder Road. They even take requests for covers at one point. “Stuck in the Middle!” shouts one voice; “Free Bird!” another. “Beach Slang!” yells somebody else, and he makes a good point.
• At Bodega, Nottingham, 26 January. Box office: 0115-896 4456. Then touring until 30 January.
