“I’m told I’m a Miranda,” says drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel. The Beaches are in their Sex and the City era. “I’m a Charlotte, I think,” adds guitarist Kylie Miller. “I don’t wanna be, but I am.” “They’re a mix of Carrie and Samantha,” Eliza asserts about The Beaches’ other two members, guitarist Leandra Earl and vocalist-bassist Jordan Miller.

Despite being toddlers when SJP et al ruled the small screen, very little has changed since the 90s when it comes to the ground covered in a morning-after conversation between four female friends, and Jordan found herself connecting with the iconic four-piece regardless.

“I really like how in every episode, the girls go to the diner and are just debriefing,” she says. “This record kind of feels like our version of that. It’s our debrief with one another about all of our bad choices.”

Their upcoming third album 'No Hard Feelings' does feel like that — as messy, honest and casual as a catch-up with your nearest and dearest. Even today’s interview takes on a similar quality, as the five of us – The Beaches plus Dork – sit down at a beach bar on Brighton seafront for an Aperol spritz (and an orange wine for Jordan). They’re not hungover, but they do inform us they partied the night before, and will be again at the end of their day of press, at a DJ set in London for the launch of single 'Last Girls at the Party'.

It serves as the euphoric ending to a record that’s otherwise pretty thematically heavy, with its chorus lyric appearing again as the album title. Plus, with the year they’ve had, it would be hard not to include a party song. The idea stemmed from a time they got booted out of a Kings of Leon party, but they haven’t stopped since. One-upping the summer they had in 2024, which included performances at massive festivals Reading & Leeds, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Roskilde and more, this year The Beaches continue their bucket-list ticking with even bigger slots at Coachella, Governors Ball and Osheaga. At the first of those three, the band were one of only two Canadian acts on the bill.

It speaks volumes of the band’s growth in recent years, because outside of the pop sphere, Canadian acts rarely break out of the country’s borders. When that happened with the 2023 single 'Blame Brett', The Beaches were determined to keep that momentum going, making a start on 'No Hard Feelings' while touring 'Blame My Ex'. Last summer, they dropped 'Takes One to Know One', a track about admitting you’re just as bad as the partner you’re moaning about, and 'Jocelyn', which sees Jordan puzzled as to why an accomplished fan would look up to her.

Groundwork laid, the project was completed with an LA writing trip, where The Beaches wrote with long-time pal G Flip and certified hitmaker Justin Tranter.

“The success of the last record was so pivotal in our career, and it really helped us basically bust through the ceiling,” says Kylie. “To have to follow up, that is for sure a lot of pressure, but even if it’s not the same, like, if it’s not as commercially successful as our last one, we’re all so proud of this. We’ve put so much work into it. If our fans are gonna like it, that’s what we really want. That’s who we made it for.”

“We opened up the conversation between everyone,” says Eliza. “It’s like, if we were to go and have a drink together, what would we talk about? That’s what the record is, which I think a lot of fans are gonna enjoy being a part of, being in on the tea.”

Despite living in each other’s pockets since they were kids (The Beaches were formed in 2013, but the girls had grown up together before that, and yes, Jordan and Kylie are sisters), their songwriting material had come primarily from Jordan’s experiences. This time, everyone’s diaries were open in the writers’ room.

“It’s not all from my perspective,” says Jordan. “There’s a lot of Leandra perspective songs. There’s one of Kylie’s, and then there’s one that is about Eliza’s high school boyfriend. But it can be very difficult to be so candid and be so direct about your feelings. I’m very bad at communicating my issues, and I sort of do so using songwriting. It’s my way of telling my bandmates how I’m feeling.”

Following 'Blame My Ex', both Jordan and Leandra found themselves single again; for Leandra, though, navigating dating has been a little more turbulent. Between the release of their debut album 'Late Show' in 2017 and the follow-up six years later, she came out as a lesbian and gained a significant following as she documented her journey online. On 'No Hard Feelings', the songs written from her perspective explore her experiences as a late bloomer.

“I guess I just started seeing people in different kinds of queer relationships,” says Leandra. “So after my ex-girlfriend, I got into a poly thing, then an open relationship, going through the queer journey. I think because I came out kind of late, I’m going through this second adolescence and making mistakes in who I’m choosing to date.”

“And there’s a lot of pain that comes with that, you know, being out and coming out later in life,” adds Kylie. “That’s a really hard thing to go through and experience. And the fact that Leandra was so vulnerable to share her stories with us and then also with our fans is a very brave thing. We’re very proud of her, and we are so happy to release this work, because you’re an integral part of our band, and your queer experience is so important for other people.”

“I know my stories help a lot of people even though sometimes they’re deranged,” Leandra explains. “My DMs are always flooded, because I share a lot about my personal life, or I’ll go on podcasts and tell stories about my coming out or my journey. It has helped a lot of people either come out or figure stuff out about their own sexuality, and that is always greater than the anxiety I live with about saying too much.”

The most obvious Leandra track, 'Lesbian of the Year', delves into the complex relationship she has with herself. Named after an official title she’d had bestowed upon her, it details her coming out story, worries that it happened too late in her life, and how that conflicts with the way other young queer people view her.

“The song is, it’s not sad, but it’s deep in the feels,” she says. “I’ve been crowned lesbian of the year, but I’ve only been a lesbian for like, five years. I mean, all my life, secretly, but I’m just going through this journey for the first time like we all are, so I don’t know any better than anyone else. A lot of the time I’m asked for advice, or I’m trauma dumped on, people come out to me in my DMs, and it’s like, thank you for telling me, but that’s also a lot. So it’s just kind of dealing with all of those things while outwardly posting very publicly, like, I’m this confident lesbian who knows herself, but I don’t always feel that way.”

The others are brave on record, too. On tracks like 'Fine, Let’s Get Married', Jordan presents herself as quite the anti-romantic. Other times, like on opener 'Can I Call You in the Morning?' and 'Takes One to Know One', she comes across as volatile and reactive, usually sounding resentful of her other half. But when the relationship actually ends, she’s not too proud to admit, on 'Touch Myself', that it affected her so much it messed up her libido.

“Sorry if this is too much information, but after I went through my breakup, I could not masturbate for like two months,” Jordan admits. “I was like, I can’t do it. And I love to masturbate. It’s good for you guys. Mom and Dad, sorry for saying this. But I just couldn’t even get there, like I couldn’t be in that headspace at all. And Leandra was experiencing something similar. So I was like, should I write a song about not being able to…”

“I thought there was something wrong with me for so long, but then I realised I was on antidepressants,” adds Eliza.

“It’s tricky,” Jordan continues. “Especially if that’s something that is important to you, for it to be taken away because of heartbreak, I think it’s just an interesting thing that is so human. And nobody had written about it, so I was like, let’s do it.”

Sonically, 'No Hard Feelings' plays on what is fast becoming the group’s signature sound: 80s new wave guitar licks with a surf rock edge and an alt-pop top line. The Cure and Joy Division pop up as references, balanced out with an obvious influence from the current pop crop. There are the giant, raw vocals of Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan, then the direct, conversational quality of Charli xcx’s 'Brat' comes through in the lyrics, as does the unapologetically explicit attitude of Sabrina Carpenter.

“We need a woman in the pop world who is unapologetically embracing her sexuality,” says Eliza. “Sabrina sings about things that men have the green light to sing about, but when women do, people don’t like it. So I’m just happy that there’s someone out there being the voice for women’s sexuality.”

We talk about the shifting attitudes towards media catered to women, how liking Twilight or Taylor Swift has become cool, in a stark contrast to the lashings teenage girls took for being fans of those things 15 years ago. “I think everything that’s cool is either done by a woman or a bunch of women like it,” says Jordan. “Girls create the trends. They know what’s cool, and it’s nice that everybody is finally listening to them and holding space for them.”

“Even speaking to our careers,” she continues, “When we started, we were the only girl band that we knew about, really, in the small market of Toronto. And now, it’s obviously changed so much for the better, but back then, we were such token girls. I was constantly worried and concerned about what the straight men thought about me, and now I couldn’t care less.”

No one wants to admit they’re the Carrie. She’s naïve, often irresponsible, and slightly delusional, but she’s also carefree, independent and a big dreamer. If 'No Hard Feelings' was inspired by the 90s rom-com, all of The Beaches’ Carrie-isms stand front and centre.