Five-piece punk band SPANISH LOVE SONGS have announced their third full length album, Brave Faces Everyone, which will be released on February 7, 2020 via Pure Noise Records. Today, the band has released the first single off of the album, “Kick,” which is available to listen to and watch above.
On the forthcoming album, lead vocalist and guitarist, Dylan Slocum shares,
“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 will be hitting the road at the end of this month for a three-week UK/EU tour supporting The Menzingers. Tour dates below:
Feb 03 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg
Feb 04 – Antwerpen, Belgium @ Zappa
“Kick” lyrics:
When you saw your dad shoot up for the first time
It must’ve come as quite a shock.
You sat numb on the bed for hours
Ignoring the afternoon’s drop-offs.
Picture him, arms outstretched in a song.
After Sunday school let out,
He’d drive the family home
And you’d talk about Jesus.But 15 years can change a man.
Alone in this wilderness.Say “keep your head up if you’re not okay.”
But not okay is what’s expected.
Claim you’re a hero
If you could make it off the couch.
You know the truth in what they say:
The world’s gonna kick you either way.Now you’re stuck in this routine
Trying to make something on your own.
Your older brother fled the country.
The cops are coming round your home.
But Kaylee has a baby on the way
They’re not gonna leave her a single mother,
The dope was legal
But they roughed you up for selling on the side.20 years will change a man.
10 with behavior is what you’re looking at.Just keep your head down and you’ll be okay.
You’re living up to what’s expected.
They’ll claim you’re nothing
When you’re walking out the door.
You know the truth in what they say:
The world’s gonna kick you either way.And mom won’t even come around these days.
You pop your prescription and put on a brave face.
Zone out to the local AM station,
Try not to think about next month’s visitation.Saw you last week
We haven’t talked since graduation.
You’re selling H with a guy to catch up
But it’s clear you’re using.
I didn’t have the guts to be a better friend.
But what’s another ten grand gonna fix in the end?Keep your head up if you’re not okay.
But not okay is what’s expected.
Claim you’re a hero
But you died there on the couch.
You knew the truth in what they say:
The world’s gonna kick you either way.
Spanish Love Songs is Dylan Slocum (vocals & guitar), Ruben Duarte (drums), Trevor Dietrich (bass), Meredith Van Woert (keys), and Kyle McAulay (guitar).
“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.
