Following the release of Beach Weather’s sophomore album ‘Melt,’ lead guitarist Sean Silverman explores Arizona, his band’s newfound sound, and the dynamics of post-pandemic creation.
“Hardcore Romance” – Beach Weather ft. Ari Abdul
It’s been an unexpected couple of years for pop rock band Beach Weather.
From taking a short-lived hiatus in 2017 to returning with a new band dynamic in a post-Covid world in 2022, time has delved them with a reignited musical spark that has pushed their need to create through a pandemic and an exploration of their separate and interconnected identities. Whether individually or as a collective, Beach Weather has found themselves savoring presence as their utmost approach to musical creation. It’s this desire to be present that has led to their latest piece of work and upcoming deluxe, Melt – a sophomore album searing with a rehabilitated identity rooted in one band’s desert beginnings.
“I don’t think we expected to have an album out so soon after the little one previous to it,” band guitarist Sean Silverman shared. We were discussing the band’s latest work and their decision to release a new album immediately following their EP, Pineapple Sunrise. “It was just, ‘When can we all be in a space together?’”
Silverman’s mantle has grown since the conception of Beach Weather, serving as the lead guitarist, writer, and producer for the musical trio. We phoned into a Zoom call – the two of us in Los Angeles, myself at home, and him preparing for an upcoming festival performance at M3F Fest in Arizona. This follows a small show run the band had at the end of 2024 following the release of Melt.
There’s something melancholic about Beach Weather starting the new year with a show in Arizona – a place that bore their beginnings, and now their present-day; Melt itself was imagined, crafted, and delivered in the heart of the Arizona desert. One can even call it full circle; a rounded, emotional journey that lends a hand to the very stories Melt tells.
“We always meet in Phoenix. We were 17, 18, 19 meeting each other for the first time and now 10 years later we’ve evolved into this band,” Silverman explains with a chuckle.
However, he notes that even going back to what’s known can present problems. “There are challenging aspects to recording in a city that isn’t known for recorded music, but it’s like the perfect recipe to create conflict in a healthy way. It’s almost like when you have too many resources, it creates too many possibilities. Something about the restriction creates this interesting tension in us that propels things to be finished.”
Recently, Beach Weather’s song “Sex, Drugs, Etc.” became a member of Spotify’s Billions Club – a feat honoring songs that have surpassed a billion streams on the platform and one the band doesn’t hold lightly. The song’s heavy bass line and the echoing voice of lead singer Nick Santino, layered with intoxicating low-tempo drums became the perfect earworm for anyone listening to music in 2023, whether through TikTok or not.
Beach Weather’s latest album takes a new approach to sound, coveting a more rock-centric tone – musically psychedelic and lyrically reflective.
Take “Hardcore Romance” for example, a recent release from their deluxe album featuring alternative-indie artist Ari Abdul. The song is electrically hypnotizing with its bouncing drum beat and Ari’s lustfully whispered notes, so much so it goes beyond sounds they’ve been known to create. There’s a built-up energy in the featured single that grows like power surging through a current until it explodes by the final chorus end – a testament to them coming to terms with their sound. Now, as they prepare for an upcoming tour circuit with Pierce The Veil and a deluxe coming May 30th, Melt feels more authentic to who the band is: Dreamers with a keenness to understanding the human condition.
From discussing the complexities of relationships and personal growth to TikTok’s impact on artists, identity and sound are no longer a question for Beach Weather. Rather, they’ve concluded the two are entirely dependent on each other. There’s a quote by Dolly Parton that reads, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” That is exactly what Beach Weather set out to discover in the years since their hiatus. Music was their purpose, a surging light within them that shows itself in the studio or on stage – and that flicker of finding their voice has grown into a flame.
— —
:: stream/purchase Melt here ::
:: connect with Beach Weather here ::
— —
Stream: ‘Melt’ – Beach Weather
A CONVERSATION WITH BEACH WEATHER
Atwood Magazine: You recently released your sophomore album, Melt, in October of last year. How has that rollout been for you guys? What have been some of the highs and lows of this new musical era?
Beach Weather: It’s been interesting because I don’t think we expected to have an album out so soon after the little one previous to it. We also did not expect to tour as much as we did the year prior. It was all about when we could be in a space together. I hated creating through FaceTime quarantine but we just had this unique pocket where we could actually make the record.Then that excitement bled into trying to fast forward on things a bit more than I think we would have done normally. So I think that was like a learning curve in itself. The nice part is that it felt exciting for our fans who have really grabbed onto it because I think a lot of fans found us in the last two or so years; and so it felt immediate to them, whereas, some of our fans that maybe had never gotten a chance to see us were wanting us to play a lot of the older songs. It’s kind of like a new challenge, satisfying all these wonderful people we’ve met along the way but then shifting gears into this new era which is a bit darker and a little less sunny than it’s been in the past.
The band created the last album over Zoom. How has that process differed from the process for your latest album, Melt?
Beach Weather: It wasn’t awful. It was just, especially like for Nick and I, so much of it is body language and so much of it is context and intention. I think nuance, intention, and subtlety is very hard to convey over this medium, or at least for now until we have chips in our brains and then we just blink. [laughs]
It just felt a little impersonal. We just wanted a connection. But this new record has some deeper themes that we couldn’t explore last time and that’s what I think felt compelling about working on it and getting it out so quickly.
You brought up that this album goes down a new route for the band. It’s a bit darker than what you have previously done. How would you describe this next era for the band? Were there any inspirations going into this album?
For starters, we wanted it to feel guitar driven because I think we are a band that is guitar driven at heart. We haven’t had the opportunity to kind of express that completely and so that was a big goal. We wanted to be intentional with the sonics of the record; to be a bit different than what we’ve done in the past and with heavier influences. I also feel like the groupthink of our influences has always kind of lived in the same world. The thing we were leaning closer towards was a lot of older records.
But we’re also all different. Nick leans more into Tom Petty, The Beatles, Rolling Stones – a timeless classic song in structure. I kind of like some progressive, heavier stuff, and so there’s some influence there. But I also find that when you listen to too much when you’re going into making a record it’s easy for it to bleed into too much of what you’re creating. So it’s good to live in the bubble of the concept of the record rather than, “Oh, we’re listening to this record or that record.”
Have there been any moments as a collective that you think have defined this journey into music – creating records or just being on stage? Have there been any moments where you guys have collectively felt like “This is one of those moments that's going to change our perception of the band.”
Beach Weather: There’s like two moments in particular that solidify it for me personally. My perspective is a little different because the band as it exists in its current form has really been around for the last two to three years, and then there’s different iterations of the band. So at least in my direct band experience, the moment was when we played this festival in San Francisco called BottleRock. It was early on in our festival career and that show just felt like magic. The thing about touring and playing festivals is like 80% of them feel a little whatever and then those 20% are what you live off of. That show felt like that 20% zone. We all looked at each other and we were like, “This feels surreal; out of body.”
When you have that collective out of body experience, it really sticks. I can close my eyes and picture that show. I can picture how nervous we were. That’s the thing, we as a group still get very nervous about playing a lot of these shows and opportunities. I don’t think it’s fair to say that we don’t feel deserving of it, but I do think we always feel like we’re on borrowed time. Every time we get on stage, I can’t believe that people are giving a shit. I just can’t believe it because you spend so much of your time ignoring that component and hoping that happens, but then seeing it, it feels fake, even though it’s not.
As I’ve mentioned, this album is very different from your previous album Pineapple Sunrise, and what I want to zone in on are the opening tracks. In the track “Pineapple Sunrise,” it’s beachy, it's euphoric, there's this focus on a kind of laid-back melancholy. Differs drastically with Melt’s opening track. What made you choose “Desert Disco” as the opening track?
Beach Weather: “Desert Disco” was a voice note that we made. Halfway through the record, we went to Boston together and we were working on what’s now some new music that’s going to come out soon. We kept struggling with this idea. We had Melt very early as the concept, but we were like, “Well, where does this world begin and end?” We made the record in the desert in Arizona. Arizona’s got this weird hold on us, for a lot of reasons, both good and bad. I think that the difference is that [Pineapple Sunrise] was melancholic and bright but this needed to feel ominous.
So that concept of “Desert Disco” was recorded and we stuck it on cassette. It lived on Nick’s cassette player for six months. Then we went to film the music video for “High and Low Places,” and while we were there, these insane coyotes were howling while we were working on the music video. We were instantly like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the record starts with a bunch of coyotes howling at the moon?” So we recorded them and shot the music video, and then that’s when [the album] mushed all together. There’s a story here. There’s a through line here. It keeps pulling on us. We just needed it to tether to an actual thought and “Desert Disco” was that.
The band went on a brief hiatus in 2019 before making a comeback in 2022. A part of these small breaks bears rediscovery – rediscovering yourself and your sound. How has that break impacted your approach to music and understanding yourself, and do you find yourselves striving for new challenges?
Beach Weather: A big part of it was there was some major growth that needed to happen. It just became a burden to make the art the way we wanted to do it how we had always done it. It became too commerce driven, and the lack of personality created this sense of, “How do we keep sustaining and making the art the way we want to do it without rules?” The minute it felt like there were rules involved, we didn’t feel inspired to create in the way that we wanted to. We were really conscious of that. Once everyone was able to reflect and live their lives for a little bit, there was more to say. I feel like when bands tour a lot, they come back and they’re like, I don’t even know what I want to write about. I truly believe bands are some of the last real dreamers, so I don’t ever want to lose that quality about what we do.
Your song “Sex, Drugs, Etc.” just made it into Spotify’s Billions Club. How did that feel? Surreal? Exciting?
Beach Weather: Quantifiable music is a really weird thing for me because all it does is say that there are people that connect with the music on a level that I didn’t even understand. That’s where it feels really special. The accomplishment is what feels redeeming because it doesn’t feel like validation but that we were getting to a truth within us that connected with people. That is what is so rare and that is what felt really meaningful when [“Sex, Drugs, Etc.”] made it into the club.
TikTok had a lot to do with the band’s introduction to newer audiences. How would you say TikTok has reshaped your approach to music and the music industry in its entirety?
Beach Weather: It’s such an interesting question in the sense that there’s a misconception about where the appeal comes from on TikTok. There’s a counterculture to the idea of why people gravitate towards music on the platform, but what I think is great about TikTok is that it’s highlighting things for new audiences. People who go, “I’m going to throw a sound into my video” and then choose a specific song – that’s the magic. Songs have to strike a chord with people. It’s getting people to remember that it’s not just about a sound, but about picking a good song.
I think if we had made the song we made and then had no other music to back it up, we would have fallen off. But we’ve sustained because we just kept making music that we were going to make regardless if TikTok existed, and that song was made regardless if TikTok existed. We haven’t changed our approach. So that discovery is what’s exciting to me because records don’t have to sound perfect, they just have to sound compelling.
— —
:: stream/purchase Melt here ::
:: connect with Beach Weather here ::
— —
— — — —
Connect to Beach Weather on
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© TK TK
© TK TK:: Stream Beach Weather ::
