Released: August 29, 2025
After “Blame Brett” turned one ugly breakup into a career-changing song, The Beaches faced an awkward follow-up problem. Jordan Miller was in a fulfilling relationship; the group had been cast as breakup specialists, and blaming the same kind of ex again would have sounded manufactured.
Released August 29, 2025, through AWAL, No Hard Feelings draws from Kylie Miller’s late-night phone calls, Leandra Earl’s queer relationships and coming-out history, and the whole band’s poor romantic judgment. Can The Beaches pull songs from four lives and keep each story personal?
Jordan still sings almost everything, and her low, dry delivery gives the album one recognizable narrator. On “Can I Call You in the Morning?” drawn from Kylie’s breakup, she fires off complaints about an ex’s new music, threatens to end things, retracts it, and asks to call tomorrow. A needling guitar line hangs over the darker bass pulse while Eliza Enman-McDaniel keeps the beat blunt and steady. By the time the chorus spills out, Jordan has started apologizing before she has finished picking the fight.
Leandra supplies some of the messiest material. “Did I Say Too Much” came from loving a woman in an open relationship and wanting an answer she could not demand. The guitars jangle around Eliza’s brisk drums, and Jordan drops into a rough half-croon that lets longing and irritation occupy the same line. “Touch Myself” is even blunter. Its bright dance-floor groove and clipped guitar responses support a lyric about being unable to masturbate without thinking of an ex. The lively surface makes the embarrassment harder to miss.
The clearest handoff comes in “Lesbian of the Year.” Jordan sings from Leandra’s experience of coming out later in life, including the shame of looking back at a younger self who did not understand why she felt apart. Light synths sit over a deep, unhurried groove, giving Jordan room to ease out of her usual sneer. The title looks like a joke on the screen. The song stays with everything that public pride cannot tidy up: confusion, old shame, and the strange work of forgiving your former self. Leandra’s details remain intact, giving Jordan’s performance the intimacy of one bandmate entrusting her story to another.
No Hard Feelings also spreads the blame around. “Takes One to Know One” turns bad behaviour into a group exchange, while “I Wore You Better” converts an old celebrity-magazine comparison into a vicious line about an ex who treated a queer relationship as an experiment. A sharp guitar solo follows the accusation, giving the anger somewhere physical to go.
“Jocelyn” points back at the band. Its chiming guitars and polished melody surround the gap between being celebrated as breakup queens and still feeling wrecked. The real Jocelyn was a fan studying politics, and setting her accomplishments beside Jordan’s “walking apocalypse” self-description makes the comparison unusually specific. The band may be playing to thousands, but Jordan is still imagining that someone in the crowd has figured out adulthood better than she has.
The production can become too tidy. Several songs return to clean drums, a darker verse, and a chorus that opens up on cue. “Dirty Laundry” receives a cleaner guitar tone than its hook suggests. The band remains audible beneath that finish, though. Jordan’s bass guides the songs; Kylie and Leandra’s guitars move between new-wave shimmer and sharper bursts, and the stacked vocals sound like friends joining the argument. At 34 minutes, the arrangements rarely linger once the hook has landed.
So can The Beaches pull from four lives and keep each story personal? Yes. Kylie’s hungover retraction, Leandra’s open-relationship fallout, the old shame inside “Lesbian of the Year” and the band measuring itself against Jocelyn all retain their awkward details. Jordan’s voice ties them together while preserving where they came from.
No Hard Feelings works as a group project because these four women know one another’s stories well enough to understand which details cannot be left out.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
© 2026 DeadNoteMedia. All rights reserved.
DeadNoteMedia 