Beached Out isn’t only a band — it’s a marriage, a barrage of memories both sweet and sad, a summation of 14 years of love, music, and maturation. “There is a lot of nostalgia in our music,” says Jeff Parker, who started the Peterborough, Ontario, indie band with his wife, Anne, after they got married. “It’s a lot about relationships — and growth.”

That all culminates, then, in Average Weekends, the band’s first full-length, out March 20th on Noyes Records. It’s eleven tracks of fuzzed-out, ‘90s-tinged indie rock that pingpongs between introspective takes on lovers, dreams, and story songs — a truly collaborative labor of love that took eight months to forge from page to studio.

Jeff and Anne met at university, bonding over late-night library study sessions. Jeff grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, raised on a diet of ‘90s indie and post-punk, while Anne was raised in Toronto, a fan of hip-hop, R&B, and reggae. Jeff had been in bands before, so when the pair married and moved to Kenora, a small town in Northern Ontario, they decided to start their own project to stave off the isolation. “We sing equally, and we write equally, and probably go through about 20 iterations of lyrics on each song until we come up with something we can both love,” says Jeff.

Anne taught herself how to play drums, and pretty soon they had a solid catalogue of singles and EPs, sharing stages with the likes of Destroyer, Preoccupations, Dog Day, and Yukon Blonde. After stepping back as work and family life took focus, Beached Out returned in 2024 with Decades, a sharp, ferocious EP that marked a deliberate reconnection with their creative lives. Average Weekends is the next step in their evolution, a dispatch from their new home outside Toronto. The title was inspired, in part, by the theme song to ‘90s Canadian comedy classic, Kids in the Hall — but mostly by the lack of such weekends in the couple’s life, and their dream of having one.

It all kicks off with the deceptively sunny swagger of “Variable Rate,” which is about “always striving for something,” says Jeff. “Let’s get to the next step, and we’ll feel free. But you never really feel like that.” And then there’s moody rocker “Falling for Sure,” which is told from a male perspective, according to Jeff, “about not listening to your partner, wasting time, and feeling like a jerk.”

“Hands in Reverse” honeys in next, the brighter side of the previous track. “It’s about wondering what’s on the other person’s mind and grabbing the hand of the person you love — and walking side by side,” says Anne.

“1000 Trees” sounds like a romp through cold, clean snow; it was written during an ice storm that left the couple’s town in the dark, and several trees frozen, on the precipice of shattering. “It was pretty cool being outside and just hearing the ice crack in the middle of the night and wondering if a tree is going to fall through the roof of your house,” says Anne.

“Average Weekends” is the aural thaw, then, Beached Out’s take on surf rock about striving for a bit of stability in a hectic world.

The pugnacious “Half Nelson” is the lone story song on the record that tells the tale of “a washed up wrestler who takes up street fighting, lives in a motel, and tries to hold on to his former glory,” says Jeff. And then there’s the bouncy yet bittersweet “Bad Breaks,” an old demo about yearning for home and your partner when you’re passing like ships in the night, burnt-out and busy. “Tuff Pin” pogos in next, a track studded with inside jokes about feeling like the odd one out. Nostalgia-laced “Supervillain” is a nod to Jeff’s ‘90s influences, a fever dream about wandering through a snowstorm, listening to the titular band on a Walkman.

The record wraps up, then, on a dichotomy. The mournful “Tastes Like Regret” takes a look at the dark side of nostalgia — “it’s about missing that feeling of being young and carefree,” says Anne. And then there’s the sweet contentment of “Staying Awake.” “It’s about being with Anne, growing older, and dreaming about all the places we could go,” says Jeff. “I wouldn’t mind staying awake with her — every night, every day.”

Because in the end, what is a band but a family? Beached Out invite you to join theirs, to peer into their lives, and, perhaps, be the soundtrack to your own nostalgia.

Bio by Brenna Ehrlich Enos

Beached Out – Variable Rate (Live at the Reverie)

Symmetry