It’s been a while since we’ve heard from San Diego surf punks Beach Goons… But during a recent phone chat with Beach Goons mainman Pablo Cervantez, he tells me that he’s spent the pandemic working on what’s next for the band, and apparently there’s a lot: “I’ve just been doing a lot of music, cooking up a lot of ideas for some music videos, just working on the brand, getting it to how I have it in my head.”
For the past six years or so Beach Goons have been making a name for themselves with a garagey, beachy brand of pop punk that incorporates the cumbia music Cervantez spent his life hearing throughout his local Chicano community in Logan Heights. In a 2018 interview with The San Diego Reader he said, “If I have to call it something, I’d like to call it Pachuco music. That was Mexican slang that used to be mean bad-ass, punk, hood-rat… I really want to emphasize this was our upbringing and this is who we are.”
Audiotree said of the band, “Beach Goons write fast paced, alternative surf punk with an underlying Latin thump that reflects true authenticity unmatched by genre peers.” However, while chatting with Cervantez, it becomes clear that his influences run even deeper, citing his favorite albums of the moment as Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Blink-182’s Dude Ranch, The Cardigans’ Life, and Chalino Sanchez’s Greatest Hits.
Beach Goons are currently on a month-long tour that kicked off September 11th at The Fonda Theatre in LA and includes a September 26th stop at MilkBoy. When I asked what can be expected of the show, Pablo – who tells me he’s a big fan of Philly, after playing an especially memorable show at Everybody Hits – tells me, “Definitely new songs, songs we’ve never played before. We always have insane energy.” And he also tells me that new official music is coming in the very near future: “I’m hoping maybe we’ll release something during the tour, but definitely after tour.”
