No one wants a band to make the same record over and over again to diminishing returns, but the Beaches might have been forgiven if they’d done that with The Professional. After all, the past 24 months have seen the Toronto four-piece gain serious traction with 2017’s Late Show, a record that suggested rock ’n’ roll wasn’t nearly as dead as it seems in a world ruled by hip-hop and radio-buffed pop.

On Late Show’s 12 road-tested tracks, the Beaches positioned themselves as capable of holding their own in a knife fight with the Strokes and the Runaways. The album landed the band breakthrough-group-of-the-year honours at the 2018 Junos, led to sold-out hometown shows at the iconic Opera House, and generally made an argument that guitars and CBGB shirts were cool again.

So how did singer-bassist Jordan Miller, her guitarist sister Kylie, keyboardist Leandra Earl, and drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel decide to follow their breakthrough? That would be by showing they’re anything but one-trick ponies with The Professional, a five-song EP that serves up disco burners (“Desdemona”), cascading electro-funk (“Want What You Got”), and teardrop postpop (“Snake Tongue”).

"With Late Show, we knew that audiences had been hearing the songs for a long time,” Jordan says, on the line from her Toronto home. “Some of the songs on that record were five or six years old, so we knew how we wanted them to sound. And the way that we recorded it was all about making those songs sound like they did live. What’s made The Professional a bit more scary but exciting is that they are all brand-new songs, except for maybe ‘Lame’. I’m really curious how people are going to receive them.”

While the Beaches throw the glam stomper “Lame” into the mix to show they haven’t abandoned what got them here, open-minded fans won’t be disappointed. Jordan calls the decision to branch out on The Professional a calculated one; no one in the era of Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music listens to one genre and one genre only, so there’s no point targeting a single audience.

“Your first album is what introduces you to people, so it was really important that those songs embodied who we were live,” Jordan says. “The greatest description of our band is ‘Come see a live show and I guarantee you’ll get it.’ With these new songs we didn’t want to repeat ourselves, so we listened to a lot of Blondie, a lot of disco, ABBA, James Brown, and David Bowie. We wanted to keep that rock ’n’ roll essence, but through a different spectrum.”

Helping guide the Beaches was Irish producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee, a past collaborator who’s worked with everyone from U2 and the Killers to Bob Moses and Bat for Lashes.

“I had sort of an idea of the direction that I wanted to go, but he really helped us focus,” Jordan says. “When we took in songs like ‘Desdemona’ and ‘Want What You Got’, he had this cool thing where he was like, ‘Let’s do a rock-’n’-roll dance album.’ So we nailed those two songs down, and then took that same energy and rolled with it when we were writing the rest of the material.”

Late Show took the Beaches to places they never dreamed when they began playing music in high school, including opening arena shows for the Rolling Stones and Foo Fighters (“Dave Grohl smells amazing”), as well as being championed by the likes of Elton John, who’s a major fanboy. As inspirational as encounters with those legends have been, Jordan notes that one of the most important pieces of career advice she’s ever received came from Metric’s Emily Haines, who coproduced Late Show with her bandmate Jimmy Shaw.

“She said, ‘If someone is telling you to do something because they think it will make you more money, or garner you more success and attention, don’t do it if it doesn’t feel right. Because at the end of the day, you are the one that’s going to have to perform the material and put your name on it.’ The message was ‘Listen to your gut, because it’s your body of work, and your face attached to the product.’ Because of that, I always trust my instincts now whenever I’m pushing myself. I asked myself, ‘Am I comfortable with these songs?’ when we were working on The Professional. And the answer was ‘Yes, totally.’ ” 

The Beaches play the Commodore Ballroom on February 7.