Celebrating and lamenting being single – yup. Defining and declaring love for the first time – and in front of 1,500 people – that happened. Screaming your head off at your ex – check! Figuring out you’re queer late in life and struggling to accept yourself – well that one just hits too close to home. There may be no hard feelings at the Beach’s 2025 tour, but on September 29th, their first night at Webster Hall, there sure were some complicated ones.
Watching the Beaches’ set on the first of their two sold-out nights was like going on an emotional journey from a bad breakup to finding yourself. The band’s third song of the night started that journey with, Me and Me. The song, written by lead singer Jordan Miller when she recently went through a breakup, celebrates the freedom and sorrow of breaking up. The anthem encourages you to celebrate simply being by yourself after a rough breakup, but it has a darkly wistful undertone of not having anyone to share the celebration with. Later in the set, the band played Grow Up Tomorrow into Shower Beer, two airier numbers that amplify the power and consequences of partying hard, while showing off the band’s strong rock riffs along with their harmonies, which were almost drowned out by the crowd singing along.
After Shower Beer, the band brought up Lee, an audience member who – for the first time ever – confessed her love for her girlfriend (who was also at the show) from the stage. Not only did the audience love it, I mean, come on, we all love love, but it also led directly into the next phase of the band’s emotional arc with Did I Say Too Much, which makes you think about the last time you asked someone out. Did you overstep? Did you move too fast? How awkward did the vulnerability make you feel?
Finally, towards the end of their set, the band played their most well-known song, “Blame Brett,” a scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs anthem, about dragging your ex. Who can’t relate to a bad breakup, the need to yell at the person you broke up with, and the realization that you can, in fact, move on. If the set had ended there, it might have felt like we had circled back to the beginning of the evening, but then came Leandra Earl’s ballad Lesbian of the Year. It’s a slow, poignant number, completely different from the rest of the set, that discusses the guitarist’s struggle with her own sexuality and realization “late in life” that she was gay. Not only was it a powerful coming-out story – it was eminently relatable (I also came out as queer later in life) – although one can question if 25 is late in life.
The set left audiences wanting more – both musically and emotionally – as the night’s journey came to a cathartic and heartwarming end.
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