Premiered yesterday, the new song from Beach Tiger is a quick and catchy two and half-minute electro pop song. Beach Tiger as a project went quiet in 2018, after releasing singles in 2015, 16, and 17, but never a full album or EP. Those songs are much in the same vein as the new song, though this time frontman Taylor McCleskey is going at it alone.
Beach Tiger announced they were back via the band’s Instagram, with a series of posts highlighting each former member and what they were up to now. Eric Mixon, who’s been a musical partner of McCleskey dating back to their college days at Clemson and their former band The Tarlatans is now playing bass with The Artisanals. Drummer Blake Shorter, who was also a member of The Tarlatans, is part of a new project with former Beach Tiger member Zac Crocker.
With McCleskey going at it alone, he went through a hard drive of old ideas and demos and landed with a new EP titled Easy Livin’ Dreaming out January 24.
As for the new song, he told Atwood Magazine the following.
“‘Numb’ centers around anxiety and the hold it has on our culture,” McCleskey explains. “Over the past few years, it has become apparent to me how real it is and how paralyzing it can be, and where I do not condemn Western medicine stepping in to aid these symptoms, I do think we, as a society, have a way of numbing ourselves to the real world. This song is a prayer, for someone close to me, to break the chains of this cycle… From a production standpoint, I’ve always been intrigued by the song structure and the unorthodox ending where out of nowhere the song gets sucked into a vortex and dissipates into space dust.”
Vocally and musically, it’s hard not to hear and think Passion Pit when you hear “Numb”, but that’s not the case with the other songs on the EP featuring McCleskey’s deeper vocal register. As has been the case with all of McCleskey’s songwriting, the new songs are right in his wheelhouse being catchy melodically, with a deep and smooth groove and rhythm.
