Beach Slang's Who would ever want anything so broken? is one of the best EP's I've heard in a long, long time. The basement floor drum rolls, catchy riffs, vocals, all of it. It's an EP about nostalgia, about being a punk rocker in 2014 and in whatever year you first tried on a leather jacket or picked up a guitar, about the beauty of the life force and of being in a dirty basement, watching your best friend's band knocking their amplifiers down, or by the crashing sea, drinking and watching the girl you want dance on the sand. The lyrics are dirt poetry: "I wear your scars on my knuckles, babe/to keep you soft." "There is anger, but it is just. It is power." "We tie our tongues and turn them into rage." The band members are from Weston and Ex—Friends and they play with the ragged skills of people who have played music for awhile, and know what will hit hardest. The guitars have a clean sound but they screech when they need to.

The sound is a mix of the Replacements, Jawbreaker, the Ergs, every good mid—tempo pop punk band and with a twinge of indie in the catchy hooks. And the vocals enhance every song, James Snyder singing and gritting his teeth at the same time. It's hard to pick a favourite, but "Get Lost" is a Bruce Springsteen style ballad (with backing vocals that will give you chills) where the narrator and whoever he sings to are the only people in the world, defiant and powerful and immortal. And if I sound like this band is riding on a coast of hype, it's thoroughly deserved. It contains memories, epiphanies, the opening of "Kids" so big that you'll ache from the emotion. The whole EP is short sweet and— dare I say it for a punk EP??— beautiful.