Album Review: Beaches - She Beats

It's been a while since Melbourne all-girl psych-rock five-piece Beaches have put anything new on the plate. Their debut self-titled effort was released in 2008 and there's been very little activity since. While they've kept fans on their toes in the three years following their 2010 EP Eternal Sphere (the only release since their debut full-length), Beaches have been digging into the nitty gritty of what made these two earlier releases so good, honing their craft to create something even better with She Beats.

Essentially, Beaches haven't changed a whole lot since their debut. She Beats, like the releases that came before, is all fuzz and wall-of-sound with just the right dose of psychedelic grit. These are five girls who really know how to do that psychedelic thing, so you can hardly blame them for sticking to their guns. Somehow, through all the indistinguishable screeches of guitars and ample amounts of feedback eating up their highly reverberated vocals, their songs are incredibly catchy.

They've managed to extract a poppy essence from songs shrouded in static (the opening track Out Of Mind owes its momentum to the sugary surf-pop harmonies), and that in itself is impressive, but in Keep On Breaking Through, The Good Comet Returns and Granite Snake, the girls drop the vocals and play with a proggier sound – a sound that they absolutely nail.

She Beats isn't too far removed from their prior releases, but it is a huge step up. Beaches have really upped the ante with this tighter and more intelligently constructed album.