Three Albums That Changed My Life: Beach Baby

UK’s Beach Baby have had a pretty ideal turn of events regarding their latest single, Beach Baby. Accruing a few cool 22,000 views on YouTube (and growing!), and props from one Zane Lowe on Beats 1, the band have hit the music industry’s sweet spot with their badass surf rock – and for very good reason.

Limousine rules, straight up. It has swagger, an air of nonchalance, a bassline that makes you weak at the knees and it’s that kind of lo-fi pop that is actually quite hard to pull off, even though they make it sound so easy. The four piece are tipped to have an absolutely stellar 2016, and if this is anything to go by, we’d say that’s not too far off the mark.

Before they well and truly explode, we asked the guys what’s special to them; what they hold dear; what three albums changed their lives. Answered by Lawrence for the first one and Ollie for the final two, it’s clear the boys are influenced by rock’n’roll royalty and it isn’t surprising when you hear their nostalgia-tinged tunes. See for yourself below, and jump on the Beach Baby hype train while there are still seats remaining!

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Tender Prey

This album changed my perception about songwriting and the use of space-arrangement. It is heavily blues influenced but it gives a completely different and idiosyncratic feel. I was in high school when I first listened to it, in a friend’s flat. It has all the qualities of a great album: the intensity and turmoil with The Mercy Seat and Deanna,; it has the confessional narrative; the more fragile and introverted ballades – always though with fangs, never too tamed. It always creates an unrest; you want to go and do it, you know what I mean? It had an immense influence on my thoughts about music and why you do what you do. I realised later the influence of the industrial Berlin sound in it as well. This was a strong team, with Kid Congo, Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey – top notch players and personalities. I mean, it blew me away. All the potential of music making was there, it was not just music, it was alive and still is. This is craftsmanship, this is art that changes your mind! Australian lads, they know their stuff!

The Beatles, Revolver

The first music I ever remember hearing was the Fab Four, so naturally I’ve kicked things off with their proto-psychedelic 1966 LP. I could have chosen 1 of about 5 of their albums cos I love them so much, but for some reason I always seem to say this is my favourite when asked the unanswerable question – “so what’s your favourite Beatles album, man?” It’s a perfect cocktail of the monochrome classic pop songwriting of the early years and the mind bending studio wizardry that characterised much of their ‘post live performance’ career. For that reason, I think it’s a real watershed moment for the band that heralded a whole new chapter in pop music history. There’s a healthy dose of George on the record, in fact I think Taxman is the best opener to any Beatles album. Paul has some of his all time career highs as well; Eleanor Rigby has got to be one of the most amazingly well written songs ever (all hail George Martin for the fantastic string arrangement). It’s always sounded to me like Yesterday being reimagined for some sort of strange secular funeral in an early 20th century time warp. John’s extrapolation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in Tomorrow Never Knows still blows my mind to this day with every listen; and Ringo’s inimitable charm in his performance of Yellow Submarine never fails to warms my heart – and no, I don’t skip past that song.

Nick Drake, Pink Moon

This record came to me around the time that I began to pursue songwriting seriously and consequently had a big impact on what I thought you could write a song about and how you construct verse. As a guitar player, I have been listening and playing catch up ever since; he’s just so agile and dexterous, it can become frustrating. Nick’s lyrics also caught my ear instantly. I’ve always felt an incredibly strong presence of “magic” in his writing, and for me that is what great folk music should do for the listener. I remember watching an interview with Johnny Marr talking about his own tastes in folk music; he said that he was attracted to the witch-like psilocybin and psychoactive properties of great folk writing. Pink Moon for me encapsulates this perfectly; it’s so cerebral and stooped in mystery. The album expresses something intangible and ineffable through metaphor. It’s like he has the answers to some of life’s biggest questions but only choses to imply meaning poetically through the songs. The final track, From The Morning, has always seemed to me like the contemplation of some sort of universal truth: A day once dawned and it was beautiful/A day once dawned from the ground/Then the night she fell and the air was beautiful/the night she fell all around/So look see the days the endless coloured ways/and go play the game that you learnt from the morning.