Five-piece punk band SPANISH LOVE SONGS released their new single “Losers 2” off of their forthcoming album, “Brave Faces Everyone”, which will be released on February 7, 2020 via Pure Noise Records.
Lead vocalist and songwriter, Dylan Slocum shares:
“This is another case of taking what we do well and trying to focus it outwards. I’ve had plenty of people ask why the songs continue to get bleaker and bleaker, but I feel like the answer is pretty obvious. This is the world we know. It’s the world I see my friends stuck in, and that I’ve seen my family stuck in. Everyone works themselves to the bones to just survive. Not to say that we’re not incredibly privileged – I’m aware – but I wanted to look outward and just acknowledge that for the roughly 99% of us, life is an endless grind, so it’s okay to feel down on it. Like, of course you’re anxious when you could fall and hit your head and have you entire life derailed by hospital bills. So “Losers” is the anthem where we try to be defiant and throw up a middle finger – whatever, “we’re losers forever.” But this is the hangover. It’s us wrapping our heads around that grind, and feeling like we can’t escape it. And like so much of the album, it’s about trying to empathize with others over this collective gloom”.
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 will be hitting the road in February, for a EU tour supporting The Menzingers. Check the dates below:
February 3rd – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg
February 4th – 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 7th, 2020.
