Spanish Love Songs have released a new single called ‘Clean-Up Crew’ – a mid-30s ode to life’s could-have-beens – the second track to debut from their highly anticipated new album ‘No Joy’ out August 25, 2023, via Pure Noise Records.
“It feels like my entire life has been spent on the cusp of something,” says vocalist and guitarist Dylan Slocum. “I wanted to play baseball as a kid, and then I went to college and got hurt. I went to Hollywood to do film and TV and got pretty close. The band has gone beyond our wildest dreams, but at some point, you get tired of chasing after your dreams. The song is me taking a step back and asking, ‘Can we handle a small life? Could we give it up and move to the middle of nowhere and not worry about chasing some dream?’ To me, that’s death.”
The new song follows the lead single ‘Haunted’, which was released last month with the announcement of ‘No Joy’. The track carries the saltwater-kissed vignetting of an Asbury Park summer, awash in Boss-inspired nostalgia and percussive acoustic guitar that build to some of the band’s biggest hooks yet. The video, directed by Hannah Hall, is a quirky view into a bar-band scene where everyone’s just looking for a good time.
Brimming with new wave pastiche, fluttering synths, shimmering walls of chorus guitar, and four-on-the-floor rhythms, ‘No Joy’ isn’t an exclamation point follow-up to the emotional catharsis of the landmark ‘Brave Faces Everyone’ as much as it is an exhale – the sound of vocalist and guitarist Dylan Slocum, his wife and keyboardist Meredith Van Woert, guitarist Kyle McAulay, bassist Trevor Dietrich, and drummer Ruben Duarte finding peace in quieter moments and embracing the negative space.
“This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to figuring out how to translate what I hear in my head with more clarity,” Slocum says.
Produced by the band and Collin Pastore (Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Illuminati Hotties) and mixed by Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, M83, Best Coast), the 12 songs on ‘No Joy’ continue to find Spanish Love Songs grappling with the messiness of what it means to be alive in the modern age – unsure of the answers themselves but confident that together, we can all come a little closer to the solutions.
If ‘Brave Faces Everyone’ was about mustering up the strength to barely break even in an increasingly bleak world, ‘No Joy’ is finding the internal peace required to stay in the black. As Slocum says, “it’s an album about finding happiness in what you have and your current moment. It might be your best moment, or it might not, but you have to find joy in it.”
‘No Joy’ Track Listing:
1. Lifers
2. Pendulum
3. Haunted
4. Clean-Up Crew
5. Middle of Nine
6. Marvel
7. I’m Gonna Miss Everything
8. Rapture Chaser
9. Mutable
10. Here You Are
11. Exit Bags
12. Re-Emerging Signs of the Apocalypse
Tour dates with Hot Mulligan:
Aug 31st – Pryzm – Kingston, UK
Sept 1st – Stylus – Leeds, UK
Sept 2nd – Academy 2 – Manchester, UK
Sept 3rd – SWG3 – Glasgow, UK
Sept 5th – Rescue Rooms – Nottingham, UK
Sept 6th – SWX – Bristol, UK
Sept 7th – Electric Ballroom – London, UK
Sept 8th – O2 Academy 2 – Birmingham, UK
Sept 10th – Effenaar – Eindhoven, Netherlands
Sept 11th – Club Volta – Cologne, Germany
Sept 12th – Logo – Hamburg, Germany
Sept 13th – So36 – Berlin, Germany
Sept 15th – Skaters Palace – Münster, Germany
Sept 16th – Strom – Munich, Germany
Sept 17th – Schlachthof – Weisbaden, Germany
Sept 18th – Trix – Antwerp, Belgium