Average Weekends - Beached Out
Noyes Records
Released on March 20th, 2026
Making music is an inherently iterative process, where sounds and soundscapes often evolve – sometimes gradually, and others, chaotically – in lock-step with the artists that produce them, as they inhabit new spaces, explore new places, and forge new identities. As much as an evolution may be heard across an artist’s catalogue, it too can be felt, as the waymarks of what once was, cast long shadows over the here-and-now; a here-and-now similarly destined to become a milepost itself. It is in that space, that aggregation of experiences, that Beached Out, the wife-and-husband duo of Anne and Jeff Parker, finds itself on the release of its first full-length LP, Average Weekends, on Noyes Records. It is the culmination of a fourteen-year journey as both partners and collaborators, replete with all the joys, pains, disagreements, stalemates, victories, losses, and acceptances that come along with it. Beached Out has walked many miles, no doubt.
While listening to Average Weekends, I’m reminded of a Portuguese term, saudade: a kind of deep, nostalgic longing that’s imbued with a certain bittersweetness; a curious combination of the knowledge that an object of longing may never return, and the warmth and fondness of that thing’s memory. Manuel de Melo put it best: “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.” It’s that type of dichotomy – of a mournful happiness; of a nostalgia that is forward-looking – that carves its way through this record from front-to-back. Beached Out brandishes their hard-earned wreaths and scars as they forge a path forward on Average Weekends, cautiously hopeful about a future that has invariably been shaped by the past, for better or worse.
Before jumping in further, I feel compelled to acknowledge the nod to Shadowy Men On a Shadowy Planet’s “Having An Average Weekend,” in the titling of both the track and record. Thirty Helens Agree: solid choice.
Average Weekends opens with “Variable Rate,” a deceptively upbeat song about perennially reaching for the next step, believing that will be the key to freedom, and how that freedom never really comes. What follows are companion tracks, “Falling for Sure” and “Hands in Reverse;” the former, a narrative told from the point-of-view of a man refusing to listen to his partner, knowing of the damage he is causing, and “feeling like a jerk,” and the latter, as foil to the former, a sentimental song about wondering what is running through your partner’s mind, and reaching out for them. “1000 Trees,” written during an ice storm, captures the essence of an eerie quiet where the world feels suspended and unstable, ready to crack and collapse at a moment’s notice.
The arrival of the title track to Average Weekends – itself, a twangy and reverb-soaked romp about striving for stability – signals a sonic shift, as Beached Out leaves behind the pop-orientation of its first act, leaning into heavier, fuzzier textures for the second. “Half Nelson,” the sole story song on Average Weekends, tells us of a washed-up wrestler, drifting into street fights, clinging desperately to some version of former glory. “Bad Breaks” pines for the feeling of “this old home,” while “Tuff Pin” (that riff!) brings a raucous energy in its inside-joke laden tale of feeling like the odd one out. “Supervillain” leans heavily into 90’s nostalgia, its “Walkman in a snowstorm” imagery lending it a surreal, warped-memory feeling.
“Tastes Like Regret” and “Staying Awake” bring a second, and final, sonic shift as the pair close out Average Weekends, where we see Beached Out balance the darker nostalgia of regretful reminiscences about lost youth with a hopeful contentment in the face of what is to come.
For me, this is a difficult record to place, though, not so for lack of consistency: Beached Out has cultivated a well-honed, life-weary sound that is on full display throughout the multitude of seasons that span Average Weekends. It feels both novel and familiar. A delicate, but ever-apparent, tension persists throughout the record, be it sonically, between the loose, overdriven, fuzzed-out guitars and the deliberate, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense drum work; between Anne’s and Jeff’s voices, as they weave in and out of one another, dispersing as quickly as they meet; or, in its cadence, as the band navigates, and regularly oscillates between, feelings and states of nostalgia, hopefulness, regret, empathy, rudderlessness, melancholy, and ultimately, a mature and time-tested love. Ostensibly, Average Weekends is a damn good, well-crafted, and listenable 90’s-tinged indie rock record – and it certainly is all of that – though, to only say so would scantily do it justice.
It is more than that.
It reads like a diary, laden in equal measure with confession and aspiration; a window into the lives of two fated travellers who have shared times, fears, and hopes for so long, and to such a depth, that their collective history defies tidy explanations of even the most mundane occurrences. Average Weekends is a deeply personal record.
There is much love in this record – Beached Out is sprung from and sustained by it, after all – but it is not that overtly colourful, heart-flutteringly cinematic, version of love on offer. Instead, it is that most hard-won of variants, battle-tested by frustration, disappointment, uncertainty, banality, and to be sure, many apologies along the way. It is a love that is undeniably durable and timeless that pulses from, and echoes through, every strum, every beat, and every word, of Average Weekends.
To me, that’s what Average Weekends is really about. It is bereft of trite exaggerations of domestic bliss, but, it is absent the amplification of crisis, too. Rather, it elegantly occupies that middle space, and confidently stays there; an honest and authentic moment-in-time in the lives of two artists, growing together.
In a word, this record is fucking fantastic. OK… two words.
