ALBUM REVIEW: No Joy – Spanish Love Songs
It feels like SPANISH LOVE SONGS must have had some kind of inside knowledge of what the world was in for when they released Brave Faces Everyone back in February 2020. As much as the LA-formed indie punks have never struggled to make bottom lips quiver, there was something in that record’s ruminations on depression and addiction and climate change and gun violence and existential dread and all that it takes to get by in a world that couldn’t care less that made it the perfect soundtrack to the last few years, and for many a high watermark in the band’s career. They’ve not really kept quiet since either, releasing regular covers on their Patreon page, and even a reimagining of Brave Faces for its two-year anniversary, but this Friday’s the big one: the arrival of a full-length follow-up bearing the ever-so-fitting title of No Joy.
But if you think you know how this is gonna go, think again – well, kind of. No Joy is still supremely melancholic; it’ll have a lump in your throat before you’ve even got through opener Lifers, but the band’s one in a million lyricist Dylan Slocum isn’t particularly interested in getting all blue in the face about how crap everything is this time around. There’s a line in lead single Haunted that sums the new mindset up perfectly: “It’ll be this bleak forever but it is no way to live” – a callback to the sardonic chorus of Brave Faces’ Self-Destruction (As A Sensible Career Choice) that finds Slocum and co. no longer trying to convince themselves that things are going to get better and instead looking to find inner peace and even joy in whatever circumstances they may find themselves.
So while No Joy may skip the fury one might’ve expected from SPANISH LOVE SONGS given all that’s transpired over the past three years or so, it is by no means short on emotional heft. Of course, you’ll gain way more from sitting down and reading through Slocum’s lyrics in their entirety than you will from the glimpses we can provide in a review that doesn’t absolutely nuke the word count, but suffice to say they remain the nailed on stand-out of all that SPANISH LOVE SONGS do. Slocum has this ability to thrust listeners immediately into the stories he tells – vivid little details like coming to in an ambulance or feeling awkward at an overzealous youth group meeting that make these songs feel real and lived in and meaningful even in the mundane. Heart racing, breathing shallow, the listener hangs onto his every word.
Sonically No Joy marks a bit of a departure – or perhaps more aptly an evolution – for the band too. Keyboardist Meredith Van Woert is way more prominent in particular, the record awash with synths and textures that add a notable new wave influence to the band’s previously more guitar-driven emo. It means No Joy feels fuller and bigger and more colourful than SPANISH LOVE SONGS have ever felt before, a track like Rapture Chaser for example becoming the kind of soaring anthem you’d expect to see THE KILLERS leading a couple of hundred thousand people in a sing-along to, even as Slocum’s lyrics keep things far more grounded than one might say of Brandon Flowers and co. This is perhaps the most defining feature of No Joy, a kind of two-way pull on the heartstrings that manages to lift your spirits even as you feel your eyes prick.
That’s mostly the case anyway; there are gentler showstoppers too, like Middle Of Nine – written for Slocum’s late grandmother – and Mutable and Exit Bags, all of which deal in sparser instrumentals and slower tempos to give Slocum even more room to devastate with his lyrics. “Wish I could live my life until I got it right” he sings in Mutable, Van Woert’s synths suitably mournful as the rest of the band keep things downbeat. Tracks like these make No Joy the band’s most sonically diverse album to date – with two of the three sensibly saved for the record’s final third as it pushes towards a 45-minute runtime that also makes it the band’s longest full-length provided you don’t count the extended version of their 2015 debut.
Of course, catharsis is always a bit of a given with SPANISH LOVE SONGS, and it arrives in abundance as closer Re-Emerging Signs Of The Apocalypse ends with the repeated triumphant mantra of “we’re a part of the equation” – this in itself a call back to a line found in the aforementioned Lifers. It speaks to taking ownership of one’s place in the world, of the things you can control even when there is so much that you can’t, and thereby sums up the ethos of No Joy perfectly. This is another outstanding, unspeakably moving effort from a band who already mean so much to so many; rather than an unnecessary repeat of one of the best albums of the decade, SPANISH LOVE SONGS have evolved noticeably yet naturally enough to ensure that No Joy will hold as special a place in their discography as anything they’ve ever done.
Rating: 9/10
No Joy is set for release on August 25th via Pure Noise Records.
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