Five-piece punk band Spanish Love Songs are sharing their new single and music video “Beachfront Property”. “Beachfront Property” is the band’s final single off of their forthcoming album, “Brave Faces Everyone“, which will be released tomorrow, February 7, 2020 via Pure Noise Records.
Lead vocalist and songwriter, Dylan Slocum shares:
“This is a song about the apathy and anxiety that I see in myself and my friends, especially concerning the chaos that seems to be coming our way. On any given day our anxiety feels hyperbolic, or is the punchline to a joke, or keeps us up all night, but we don’t really do anything about it because it feels insurmountable and inescapable. It’s not meant to preachy – life is difficult. But we have to try to call ourselves on our shit if we ever hope to change anything”.
On a more literal level, the track focuses on relevant topics such as climate change, student loan debt, and gun violence – some of the album’s recurring themes – because Slocum obsesses over these problems. He says:
“The answers seem so obvious, yet nothing ever really changes. It’s tiring”.
Slocum continues to share about the record:
“This album is us honing in on what we think makes our band resonate with people – namely, the feeling that you’re not alone. These are songs about looking outward and finding that, for all our differences, most of us are just trying to get by as the world is going to hell around us. We don’t have any grand ambitions beyond that — we just want people to feel acknowledged. There’s comfort in knowing we’re on the same sinking ship. We want the album to be a knowing nod and a way to make the world a slightly more bearable, even if it’s just for 40 minutes”.
The ten-track album, produced by guitarist Kyle McAulay at Howard Benson’s West Valley Recording, is steeped in the same detail-rich storytelling of Bruce Springsteen, The Menzingers and Manchester Orchestra. These songs represent the situations Slocum, McAulay, and their bandmates bassist Trevor Dietrich, drummer Ruben Duarte and keyboardist Meredith Van Woert experienced during 30-some weeks of rigorous touring during the album cycle of their previous record, Schmaltz.
In support of “Brave Faces Everyone”, the band is currently on a three-week EU tour supporting The Menzingers. Check the dates below:
3rd February – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg
4th February – Antwerpen, Belgium @ Zappa
“When you’re young, you just want to be heard” opines Slocum. The singer and guitarist of LA-based punk quintet, Spanish Love Songs, is referencing his band, but he could just as easily be talking about himself. Since forming in 2014, Spanish Love Songs certainly have been heard, from legions of underground audiences at The Fest and South By Southwest to outlets like NPR, who hailed the group’s 2018 album, Schmaltz, as a “wellspring of big ideas, bigger riffs and the biggest possible feelings about love, war, fear and existential crisis”.
Over the past six years, Spanish Love Songs have released two albums and an EP. With “Brave Faces Everyone”, the songs are character stories set in small-town America and anxious urban jungles alike, unfurling heartbreaking tales of addiction, depression, debt and death juxtaposed alongside looming societal bogeys like mass shootings, the opioid epidemic and climate change. They’re all at once personal vignettes and universal truths of life in the 2010s, the lines blurred between Slocum’s own experiences and those of his friends and acquaintances. It seeks to find balance between realism and optimism.
“If you sing something loud enough and long enough” Slocum muses “hopefully people are able to find some peace in that”. “Brave Faces Everyone” experiments with more traditional song structures and fewer forwardly caustic moments this time around haven’t dulled the band’s sound. If anything, they’ve accentuated the most important parts of it. When everything is loud and urgent, nothing is. But when Slocum’s voice swells to a roar on this new record, the undeniable power grabs you by the collar and forces you to pay attention – and that’s the difference between simply being heard and truly being understood.
“Brave Faces Everyone” will be released on February 7, 2020.
