by Ben Bonadies

Photo courtesy of Beeef

Hold on to your tenderloins, Beeef is back. Yes, the sultans of steak have returned after five long years away with their new album Somebody’s Favorite, out this Friday, September 6. Lucky for you, Perry Eaton has heard your anguished cries and blessed you, the readers of Allston Pudding, with an exclusive first look at one of those new songs a day early. 

It’s called “Something In The River” and it’s Eaton’s messy love letter to Boston. In the song, Eaton describes moving to Brooklyn for a year before eventually returning home. “City lights come into view, ‘Massachusetts welcomes you,’” he sings while around him the drums pound steadily like the flow of the mighty Charles. The song offers plenty of grievances with the city—the noise, the weather, the pull of bigger, better things elsewhere—but Eaton is sure there’s something keeping us all here, something we might not even be aware of. Maybe part of loving this town is hating it, too.

“Something In The River,” is the penultimate track on the new album. Everyone knows penultimate tracks are for the real heads. “Lucky,” “The Girl is Mine,” the Sgt. Pepper’s reprise. I’ve heard the whole album and can tell you that this one is definitely for the freaks. It also belongs to one of my favorite traditions in song: title tracks that aren’t title tracks. “You don’t have to be the best to be somebody’s favorite,” Eaton sings in the song’s closing minute. Hey, that’s the name of the record.

Eaton tells us that the North Star for their latest were some stars from the north: Alvvays. Eaton credits the Canadian indie rockers, who Beeef supported at the Paradise in 2017, with inspiring the band to get more synthy with it while recording Somebody’s Favorite. 

As for the gap between albums, Eaton says the time away was definitely not in the plan.  “It was a bit of a patchwork process, working with different producers in different locations,” he said. “It’s easy to get impatient with a creative project like this, especially when we’re all juggling jobs, living in a couple different states.” But time is kind to good work, and the extra attention paid to mixing and mastering really shows, especially in good headphones. 

You can see the added polish in the artwork created for Somebody’s Favorite designed by Bailey Elder. Beeef have always tended toward the clean side of things—in their guitar tone, in their design, in their nice shirts—but they took a little extra spit shine to this bad boy.  

Beeef will be debuting new songs at their album release show coming up at the Lilypad on Thursday, September 12, 2024, joined by Photocomfort. 

Somebody’s Favorite is out tomorrow, Sept. 6, 2024. Listen to it on bandcamp when it comes out.