The third full length album by five-piece punk band Spanish Love Songs, Brave Faces Everyone, will be released on February 7, 2020 via Pure Noise Records. In support of the album, the band will be hitting the road at the end of January for a three-week UK/EU tour supporting The Menzingers. Immediately following their return to the states, the band will be jumping into a full US tour starting on February 20, where the they will be supporting The Wonder Years alongside Free Throw and Pool Kids. The tour comes to Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park on March 19th.
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 band has released the first single and music video off of the album, "Kick," and have launched physical pre-orders, which are available here.
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.
"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.
Spanish Love Songs is Dylan Slocum (vocals & guitar), Ruben Duarte (drums), Trevor Dietrich (bass), Meredith Van Woert (keys), and Kyle McAulay (guitar).
Upcoming Tour Dates:
SUPPORTING THE MENZINGERS:
Jan 25 - Hamburg, Germany @ Gruenspan
Jan 26 - Berlin, Germany @ BI NUU
Jan 28 - Wein, Austria @ WUK
Jan 29 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Dynamo
Jan 30 - Stuttgart, Germany @ Universum
Jan 31 - Munchen, Germany @ Technikum Munchen
Feb 01 - Cologne, Germany @ Die Kantine
Feb 03 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg
Feb 04 - Antwerpen, Belgium @ Zappa
Feb 06 - Southamton, UK @ Engine Room
Feb 07 - Bristol, UK @ SWX
Feb 08 - Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
Feb 11 - Glasgow, UK @ Queen Margaret Union
Feb 12 - Newcastle, UK @ Riverside Newcastle
Feb 14 - Birmingham, UK @ The Asylum Bar & Venue
Feb 15 - London, UK @ O2 Forum Kentish Town
SUPPORTING THE WONDER YEARS:
Feb 20 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
Feb 21 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
Feb 22 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
Feb 23 - Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live
Feb 25 - Lake Buena Vista, FL @ House of Blues Orlando
Feb 26 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
Feb 27 - Nashville, TN @ The Cowan
Feb 29 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
Mar 01 - Dallas, TX @ Canton Hall
Mar 03 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
Mar 04 - San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park
Mar 05 - Pomona, CA @ The Glasshouse
Mar 06 - Las Vegas, NV @ Fremont Country Club
Mar 07 - Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater DTLA
Mar 08 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
Mar 10 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
Mar 11 - Denver, CO @ Summit Music Hall
Mar 13 - St. Louis, MO @ The Ready Room
Mar 14 - Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theater
Mar 15 - Chicago, IL @ Concord Music Hall
Mar 16 - Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues Cleveland
Mar 18 - Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
Mar 19 - Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes
Mar 20 - New Haven, CT @ Toad's Place
Mar 21 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia
