Jim Lindberg, the lead singer and songwriter of the iconic California skate punk band Pennywise, has released an 11-track album with his side project, The Black Pacific, titled Here Comes Our Wave.
This highly anticipated album is out now on Toronto-based Dine Alone Records (home to The Dirty Nil, Jimmy Eat World, and NOBRO). It was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Paul Miner (Touche Amore, Death By Stereo, H2O) at Buzzbomb Studios in Orange, CA, across two sessions in spring and fall of 2023.
The Black Pacific, which previously released a self-titled debut on SideOneDummy Records in 2010, showcases songs solely written and performed by Lindberg, featuring his longtime collaborator and drummer Alan Vega.
“I’ve been writing songs for Pennywise and various side projects for many years, and I’ve amassed a catalog of hundreds of demos, literally boxes of cassette tapes and CD’s and hard drives from the last few decades,” says Lindberg. “Some of the songs weren’t right for Pennywise, and all of these songs I worked on with Alan from The Black Pacific so it just made sense to put out under that name. When I pick up an electric guitar this is the music that comes out of me, regardless of what name it comes out under.”
The album kicks off with the hyper-kinetic opening track and lead-off single, “I Think I’m Paranoid.” Lindberg says of the track, “I’ve had this song for a while now and it was about all the senseless violence, terrorism, government conspiracies and divisiveness that make you want to move to a desert island somewhere, but now I’ve updated it to include hate groups, militias and global pandemics, so it’s basically just a panic attack with distorted guitars at 120 Beats Per Minute.”
The rest of the album doesn’t let up from there with tracks like “No Fun” about sociopath dictators around the world inflicting chaos and death on innocent civilians, and the relentlessly pounding “Here We Come” about the encroaching threat of A.I. taking all our jobs and eventually replacing us completely. The lyrics on this album are extremely timely and reflect the millennial angst that continues to build around the world. He explains, “I’ve always felt the need to purge my frustration with our self-defeating tendency to want to destroy ourselves and the planet in a never-ending quest for power, dominance and greed, and that message is more urgent than ever so I didn’t want to wait any longer to put these songs out.”
But there are several tracks that are about the resignation that maybe the dreams of acceptance and escape are the only things that helps keep hope alive. “Float Away” is a rare love song from Lindberg about wanting to build a raft so he and his wife can float away to “Canada or Timbuktu” – and in “I won’t Let You Down” he wistfully tells her “Somehow we’ve made it through it all” and now they enjoy the sunsets waiting for “the flash of green, shining through the gold.” The closing title track is Lindberg’s ‘love song to a wave.” A lifelong surfer and member by proxy of Taylor Steele’s Momentum Generation, it’s hard not hear that Lindberg finds his escape from all the carnage in the world by sharing the ocean waves and spending time with his friends and family.
The long-awaited follow-up to their debut album, Here Comes Our Wave, is a powerful and thought-provoking release from The Black Pacific. It reflects a sense of resignation to our flawed world while remaining hopeful that love and respect for nature can help us navigate even the stormiest seas.
