Spanish Love Songs: Optimism As A Radical Life Choice
SPANISH LOVE SONGS have been one of the most praised new bands within pop-punk and emo. Since their breakthrough on their second album Schmaltz the band have just been rising up the ranks. Now with the release of their latest album Brave Faces Everyone the band look set to take things even further. On their recent UK run with the THE MENZINGERS we caught up with vocalist Dylan Slocum to discuss the band’s rise and what this new album means to them.
Despite the love and praise the band are currently receiving, it’s certainly not something Dylan takes for granted. “We tend to underestimate just how much people like our band which is probably a good thing. Like the response to the new album has been so outrageous to us because we didn’t think that many people knew who we were. I still think it could all disappear in an instant.” It feels like a lot has changed for the band in the last two years between the release of their second album Schmaltz and Brave Faces Everyone. “It was DIY forever but now it’s not, which I kindalove. Because whilst DIY is great, so is having other people helping. It just allows us to focus on what’s important.” When talking about the actual writing of the album it feels like the band have just expanded on what they’d previously done. “I wrote both albums similarly in that I would start with the song structure, lyrics and melody. Schmaltz was a lot more thrown together whereas this time we could actually do stuff like pre-production and we had a practice space where we could all be together.”
The new line up additions helped them push their sound too as Meredith [Van Woert, keys] and Trevor [Dietrich, bass] were both able to have a lot more input on the album this. “It was good to have a bit more push and pull in the band. There was more fighting but weirdly I think it worked out. Schmaltz was just like ‘here’s my idea, here’s what we’re doing.’ We recorded the album ourselves but it wasn’t just me and Kyle [McAulay, guitar] making the decisions, Trevor was too. It was just a more collaborative effort and there was just more opinions, especially on the production side. But on the song-writing side, all five of us have a say.”
Despite having loose ties to pop-punk, SPANISH LOVE SONGS have clearly set their sights well beyond the genre. “We all still love pop-punk but a lot of us don’t really listen to it actively. A lot of the time it’s just a little tired now. I been playing in pop-punk bands since I was 16, I know how that progression is gonna go. I mean we’re not punk enough to be a punk band. Not indie enough to be indie and not twinkly enough to be an emo band.” This decision has allowed them to really find their own feet as a band and start to forge their own path. “I think with this album we’ve put out the first album that is entirely our own sound. Lazy people are still just gonna say we’re ripping off THE WONDER YEARS and THE MENZINGERS. That’s fine, we love those bands are are touring with them. But this is the first album that sounds like us.”
So when it comes to lyrics, Brave Faces Everyone also saw Dylan shift away from the more personal stuff of the first two albums and instead start to tell other people’s stories. “I think something that has been misunderstood by more casual listeners is a lot of the new stuff isn’t about me. It’s stories, I mean you’re gonna write yourself into the stories you’re telling. There’s a few deeply personal stories on the album but I don’t think it’s as hard as it might seem because I have some distance from a lot of it. It’s probably my fault, going from Giant and Schmaltz which are like purely my emotions.” This ties into what he describes as the main theme of the album: empathy. “It’d be a shitty album if it was about empathy and I couldn’t empathise. That was kinda the exercise for this album. I wanna sing about empathy but how do I really do that? I guess you just have to really inhabit these songs and put yourself in that person’s position.” It’s something he seems to struggle with himself but is striving to be better at. “Every single person I know struggles with it, it’s one of the great tragedies of being human. You could be sitting across from me and be suffering deeply and for whatever reason I either can’t figure it out, or I’m not allowed to talk about it. Or I even misunderstand it and judge you either by your socio-economic class, the colour of your skin or anything like that.”
Another way this album is less personal is how it looks a bit more outward with it’s politics. Again though Dylan feels like this comes from a place of empathy. “So I think there is political stuff on the album but it’s more just saying this is what’s happening, react accordingly. I’m not gonna tell someone how to react over the fact the planet is getting warmer. I can tell you what I think you should be doing. You should be scared but I would never wanna come down on somebody. ‘Cos again, if you wanna empathise with someone, how do you empathise with the person that doesn’t believe climate change is real? If you just shout at each other nothings ever gonna change.”
He concludes our chat just summing up the main thing he’d like people to take away from Brave Faces Everyone. Again it all comes back to empathy. “I think we’ve been pitching it as ‘you’re not alone’. I think that ties into the empathy stuff we were talking about earlier. Somebody is probably going through what you’re going through somewhere in the world. As easy as it is to feel isolated and alone. Try not to, I know it’s hard. We’re trying to build this community of people who can be real about some things and have fun.”
So how has the response to Brave Faces Everyone been for you?
Dylan: It’s been great, it’s been unexpected though. I mean I knew that we had fans over here and people who were excited but I don’t think we ever could guessed how excited people would get over the album. The pre-orders and streaming numbers, all that was really good. It’s been a better response than we ever could have hoped for.
Did it feel like your popularity over here after the release of Schmaltz was very sudden and surprising?
Dylan: Yeah I mean it was exciting, Schmaltz was an album we put out with no expectations so anyone who started liking us because of it was a surprise. Both in the states and over here. Our European label put in a lot of work too. And I think one thing that helped is we hadn’t actually toured the UK yet. Like our first time here was the end of 2018 after that album was out. So holding off like that was a big benefit for us. People who enjoyed the first album were excited so by the time it happened those people were like “hell yeah!”
So you already had a decent fanbase established here before you actually got round to playing shows
Dylan: Yeah it was good to just know people wanted to see us. And now we’ve come back a lot since then and it just keeps growing. I mean end of last year we did two nights in London with Hot Water Music and that was only like two months ago, so we’re lucky we get to keep coming back.
So how has this tour been and how is the new material going down at these shows?
Dylan: It’s been good, I mean the album came out so recently that last night was the first time I saw a full reaction to some of these songs but I’m so happy about that. There are some songs we’re still figuring out, like we put them in the set and if the reaction is good we know it’s gonna be a good set. We’re still rehearsing a few of the other songs getting ready to add them in. Like the way we record with our schedules, we don’t do it live in room. We do each part individually so we’re never actually all playing it together until we’re finished. So once the album is done we’re a bit like a cover band learning these recorded songs. We’ll have to listen back and figure out exactly what we recorded for certain parts cos we don’t write it down. We’ve just been kinda going through the process of re-learning the songs and we’re still fucking them up a lot.
It feels like a lot people compare you to THE MENZINGERS and THE WONDER YEARS, how has it been going on tour with them though?
Dylan: I’m never offended when people say we sound like those bands. I’m offended when people say we’re ripping them off, that’s lazy. I mean we’re all white dudes from America of roughly the same age and class. Like no shit we’re gonna sing about some similar things. It would be weird if we didn’t. There’s nothing offensive about the comparison, I guess sometimes it just feels lazy. But the tour has been great and we have a lot of crossover in fans. Also we just love THE MENZINGERS and THE WONDER YEARS. They’re the best bands in our genre so of course we wanna tour with them. Like we’re playing the O2 venue in Kentish Town tonight, we don’t do that on our own.
Brave Faces Everyone is out now via Pure Noise Records.
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