The Beaches • Annie Dirusso • October 11, 2025 • The Complex
Reviewed and Photographed by Amelia Weyerstall
It may have been raining out, but the crowd came out for The Beaches at The Complex in Salt Lake City with opening act Annie DiRusso. While others were forced to brave the precipitation at other shows going on in SLC, we were fortunate to be inside the warm confines of The Rockwell room of The Complex.
Annie Dirusso
Annie DiRusso came out onto the stage with a ton of positive energy and lots of fans excitedly awaiting her in the crowd. The first thing that DiRusso said after walking out on stage was, “Salt Lake City! Tonight kinda feels like a movie. Salt Lake tonight kinda feels like a good a** movie. Do y’all like movies? (yeahs) All right, what about like “How to Train Your Dragon”? “10 Things I Hate About You”, what about “Twilight: Eclipse”? What about “Percy Jackson”? I actually think that that’s a pretty bad movie; I’d go with the book on that one. What about the “School of Rock”? We’re gonna take you to the school of rock tonight, Salt Lake.” before playing the intro to the song “Good A** Movie”.
In the middle of the song, DiRusso introduced the band by saying, “Give it up for my band with me. On drums we got Annie DiRusso, Annie’s favorite movie is “Whiplash”. On bass we got Annie DiRusso, Annie’s favorite movie is “Despicable Me”. And to my left on lead guitar, we’ve got Annie f*cking DiRusso, Annie’s favorite movie is “Boss Baby”. And I am Annie DiRusso, and my favorite movie is “Get Smart”.”
Obviously not every member of the band is named Annie DiRusso, but it was a cute way to highlight each of the members of the band in the beginning, and the real DiRusso later said at the end of the night, “I’ve got one more song for ya’ll and I have a great band with me and they are not all named Annie DiRusso. To my left on the guitar, we got James Eichman; to my right on the bass, we got Book, not Brooke, and behind us on drums, we got Levi Bennett. I’m having the best time traveling with y’all, by the way, plus Sofie at merch and Mike, who’s TMing.”.
It was so sweet to hear how grateful Dirusso was to be on tour with The Beaches. Through her set, she mentioned, “I love Salt Lake. I’ve played here a couple of times at Kilby Court and Kilby Block Party about a year or two ago. So happy to be back here tonight opening for the Beaches, Such an honor, yeah, this is gonna be awesome.”
“This is our third night on tour opening for The Beaches. These shows have been the most fun ever; we are so honored to be here.” “Who’s hyped to see The Beaches? Y’all the show rips, it is gonna be amazing.” This was a very kind way to thank the headline band.
DiRusso came up with interesting ways to introduce each song, the most memorable being, “This next song is one that’s interesting to play in Salt Lake, because it’s by the water, right? Salt Lake? The thing that I love about that is that we’re always like damn, it can feel really dry here. Yeah, but then I remember that there’s the lake right there, and I’m like, you know what? And tonight it was like in this mode, I’m kinda like, my new thing is let’s just keep Salt Lake wet.” before playing the song “Wet”.
Annie DiRusso was a fan favorite. People in the front of the crowd were wearing “I love Annie DiRusso” handmade merch, complementing her guitars all night long, and there was even a group of guys in the middle of the crowd that DiRusso recognized from a previous Kilby Court show. People were screaming her song lyrics and dancing around throughout her set. The whole band ended the night off with a choreographed dance to the song “Coming Soon” with little kicks and all. At the end of the song, they all fell over in a cartoonish way, making the audience laugh and cheer loudly.
The Beaches
The Beaches set started with a voicemail about a girl leaving a sweater at the person on the other end of the phone’s house. The intro for “Last Girl At the Party” started to play as all of the members of the girl group, The Beaches, ran onto the stage. The crowd was instantly dancing around, loving the song from the new album and tour, titled “No Hard Feelings”.
The Canada-based band, featuring Jordan Miller on lead vocals and bass, Kylie Miller on guitar, Leandra Earl on keys and guitar, and Eliza Enman-McDaniel on drums, was electric and so much fun to watch because of how much they include their audience.
Jordan Miller asked the audience, “Are there any single folks in the audience tonight?” and then, when a bunch of people in the crowd raised their hands, Jordan continued by saying, “All right, okay, I see you. I’m newly single, I’m 12 days in. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate the encouragement. Yeah, it’s funny being single, you have to kind of spend a lot of time by yourself. And I think that can be a good thing, you know, because you can’t really fall in love with someone else until you fall in love with yourself. I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff alone, I’ve been going to the movies by myself, going dancing by myself, drinking a bottle of wine by myself, and getting dinner at a table of one. Scratch that, a table for Me & Me.” and then played their song “Me & Me”
The trend of the voicemails continued throughout the night, with another coming on to say how the person listening should go outside, touch grass, and call the sister. This voicemail then turns into the fan favorite song, “Cigarette”. Everyone in the crowd was loving their performance, and it was many people’s first time seeing The Beaches play. Regarding seeing the band before, Kylie Miller said, “If you’ve seen us before you know how f*cking crazy we’re gonna get tonight. Speaking of crazy, one year ago our tour ended the “Blame My Ex” tour, and I threw up in a cab, and it relates to this next song. Does anybody ever get FOMO? I’m like the queen of FOMO. This song is called “Shower Beer” and it deals with that.”
Interacting with the crowd is a huge part of the Beaches show, Jordan Miller asked, “Alright Salt Lake City, we’ve got a question for you. We wanna know if you’ve ever said too much? Is there any brave soul in the audience who would like to come up on stage and share a story about oversharing? Oh my god, you seem super enthusiastic. And while you’re coming up here, I’ll share an embarrassing story. The last time I was in Salt Lake City…” before sharing a story about how she went to use the bathroom outside of a venue and ended up deadbolted inside of a porta-potty that almost got picked up and shipped away from the venue.
The crowd was giggling at the unfortunate experience. When the brave souls came up onto the stage, they shared a few stories of when there were times they were oversharing, one about how they accidentally told their teacher about their online stalking habits, and another about talking to someone from Texas about cowboy boots. Both stories made the crowd laugh and gasp at the stories. This whole interaction was, of course, going to be the intro to The Beaches’ song, “Too Much.”
A third voicemail came on, this time with two people discussing how they are breaking their “No-talking” rule because the guy kissed the girl’s friend and then passed out on her floor. The girl told everyone the guy cheated on her, and he was upset about being exposed. This intro started the song, “Can I Call You in The Morning”. The whole crowd was invested in the stories that were coming out through the voicemails.
The Beaches love the Utah crowd, with drummer, Eliza Enman-McDaniel, saying, “Holy shit, you guys are always such an amazing crowd every time we come here. I just wanted to take a second to say how much it means to us to have all of you listening to the new album, singing all of the words to the new songs, it really means a lot because its a little scary putting out something new after having a viral moment so thank you guys so much for all the support on the new album.” before playing the hit song from their “Blame Your Ex” album, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Paranoid”.
On a more personal note for the band, bassist Leandra Earl shared how their song “Lesbian of the Year” helped her process some emotions for coming out later in life. “Did anybody else come out later in life? Any later in life lesbians? (tons of cheers from the crowd and hands in the air) Oh yeah! And that’s the way to do it. This song was really powerful to write with my best friends and allies, and first people I came out to 5 years ago. And it was really nice to get all of the emotions that come with coming out later in life and finding yourself and your sexuality and confidence later in life.
It was great and healing to write that with my best friends, so thank you, Jordan, and thank you all for being here in this safe space. And I see a lot of the DMs about how my coming out story has helped a lot of people, so that’s really cool to hear, and it helps me just keep doing this confidently, I hope.” It was a very sweet moment to share with the crowd; it was like everyone understood each other.
Towards the end of their show, The Beaches continued their tour tradition of crowding a new Jocelyn every night, this time was special as there was actually someone named Jocelyn in the audience who fit the character in the song. The Beaches also played their hit song, “Blame Brett,” which the audience, of course, was screaming along to. The Beaches had such a fun and engaging set!