Our Lives These Days - On The Last Five Years, Treading Water, and Spanish Love Songs

What I remember are the mornings. 

Not all of them. But enough of them. 

Or, rather, I remember how a number of them felt. The fleeting dark blue hue of the night surrendering itself to the sunrise, often turning the sky, at least briefly, unspeakably gorgeous pinks and oranges that photographs could truly never do justice.

And I would have been just absolutely insufferable about it, had it been something that I was aware of at the time. 

I can say that, with confidence, because of how I was. The things that I perhaps did not recognize in myself then that I try to be inherently more aware of now—an insufferable nature about any number of things. And I would like to think I have grown out of that. And to an extent, I have. I think I have. 

But not completely. 

We are always growing, really. But sometimes, we are also regressing. 

I would have been insufferable about it. The potential is there that I would have made it an enormous part of my personality. It would have been the thing that I turned to regularly that year. It would have been the thing that underscored the inevitability of the long, seemingly unending nights that were often punctuated by sobbing, and writhing, and a terrible sense of isolation, and my fist clutching the second gin and tonic of the evening. 

I would have been just absolutely insufferable about it, and I can say that now, because five years later, from the moment it begins until the final line of the last song is spoken, I catch so many unflattering and humbling glimpses of myself in its reflection, and I know how much attention I would have wanted to draw to that then, and how it is taking everything within me not to draw that kind of attention to it now.

A kind of cry for help that, more often than not, falls on unlistening ears. 

What I remember are the mornings. 

Not all of them. But enough of them. 

I remember how quiet it was, in the winter. The snow falling silently. The whirring sound of a car’s tires on the unplowed street. The soft crunch of the snow, packing down beneath the trudge of my winter boots

Or the air, already growing thick and heavy with humidity as June gave way to July. 

I remember the morning. When the day was just beginning. And the small amount of solace—not even comfort, really, but a little bit of quiet, that they provided.

*

Have you ever felt lower than everyone else?

And this is something that I do, and something that I have, certainly, spoken of before. About how, if I am listening to an album for the first time, any number of years after it was originally issued, how I will both focus on the version of myself within that very moment, yes, but I also find that I will place myself within the past, to the year the album in question was released.

And if it makes sense to do so, I think about where I was, and who I was, in that specific year. And I give consideration to if I were to have been introduced to the album then, upon its release into this world, and not five, or more, years later, if I would find myself to attached to it, or enthralled by it. Or compelled by it. If it would have had the same level of allure and immediacy. 

Or, if I can recognize the fact that it was, however far in the past I am, an album that I would not have been ready for—to understand. Or to appreciate. Or to find a way into. 

If it was something that, however many years after the fact, found me at the time when I needed it to.

I’m feeling lower than anyone else.

*

I am not always attached to the idea of being alive. 

And this, I have never thought, makes me special or unique in any way. It is certainly not a good thing, or one of the more endearing characteristics that I have. If anything, it is something that contributes to how difficult I am to be around. I am remiss to say I do not wish for it to be something that defines me, because I am uncertain if that is entirely true. 

It, perhaps, becomes defining, regardless of any efforts for it not to.

There is, of course, at least for me, and perhaps for you as well, an allure to the melancholy.

There is, of course, an allure to sorrow. To pain. Somebody else’s pain, and sorrow, and all of the ways you ultimately catch glimpses of yourself in it. 

Something that I have become more aware of, and certainly come to appreciate, and respect, over the last few years, w/r/t to songwriting in contemporary popular music, is how an artist will dress up, or disguise, extremely personal, bleak, or sad lyrics, through an arrangement, or a structure, that creates a contrast—the song itself can be lighter in sound, or even infectious. And that creates enough of a distraction that the lyrics do not resonate right away. 

It takes further and further listening and time spent until the weight of it all hits you.

The songs can be infectious. They do not have to be lighter in sound, or tone. They can be powerful, or triumphant at times. Just simply enormous in bombast and scope. It grabs your attention. It doesn’t create less of a contrast, maybe just a slightly different one. One that juxtaposes a kind of exuberance or enthusiasm, with lyricism that can be, at times, pitch black in what it depicts. 

Poetic, but ultimately human and unabashedly honest in how it depicts it. 

I think I struggle with describing genres. Maybe I always have, even in the earliest days when I began writing about music analytically. But I think, at least in the last three or four years, it has become something that I get a little hung up, more and more, when I attempt to explain something that has a sound, or an aesthetic, that I think is worth more detail than simply saying, “it’s indie rock,” or, “they are kind of folky.”

Because those give a very general sense of something, and are not meant to be diminutive, but can and often do sell an artist, and the sound they are working to create, short.

But then, this is how I often end up in the weeds. Over-explaining something that does, perhaps, not really warrant it.

You could describe the five-piece Spanish Love Songs as a “rock band,” because of the arguably traditional instruments they use—electric guitars, bass, drums, and keyboard. The guitars themselves are often loud, or at least there is a ferocity to them. 

You could describe Spanish Love Songs as “indie,” maybe because they have less to do with the sound or style you may associate with that, but their albums are released through an independent label—Pure Noise.

Spanish Love Songs describe themselves, via the short biography on their Bandcamp site, as a “punk rock band” from Los Angeles, California. They also, apparently, have referred to themselves as “grouch rock.”

And I would say that there is an arguable punk rock edge to some of the snarl and certainly within the urgency of how some of the band’s lyricist and singer, Dylan Slocum, delivers many of of his lyrics, certainly on the band’s third album, and their first for Pure Noise, Brave Faces, Everyone, released in February of 2020.

But for as aggressive, or loud, as Brave Faces, Everyone can become, there is something often melodic, and beautiful about it. And in that aggression and beauty, there is a sorrow. It is a haunting album, in the end. All of those things creating a convergence—an occurrence I am always looking for, of course, in places where there may not necessarily need to be one.

I think I struggle with describing genres, and recently, I found myself saying Spanish Love Songs was an “emo band for adults.”

And this is a descriptor that I have, I think, used in the past. I stop short of saying I have reservations about it, here, within this context. Because I do understand how it looks on the page, and how it might be difficult to accurately convey what I am trying to articulate.

And there are, of course, a number of different bands throughout the last 40 years, give or take, that could fall into the descriptor, for any number of reasons, as “emo.” It’s a subgenre that, like many subgenres or movements or whatever within the zeitgeist, has come in waves of interest and popularity. It was, I think, during the polarizing heights it reached in the early to mid-2000s, an incredibly maligned and perhaps ultimately misunderstood genre. 

I feel like since I became aware of its resurgence—or that the sound, and aesthetic, and the idea, or movement, continued to push itself forward—roughly a decade ago, it has reached a place where it is popular enough for bands moving within to have a large following, but still remain underground enough that it has been able to sidestep a lot of the scoffing and criticism an emo band would have been the recipient of 20 years ago. 

And there is an association, at least for me, with this style of music—pop-punk, power pop, emo, whatever you wish to call it, or however you want to describe it, with youth. Or a younger audience. Younger listeners. Listeners with a lot of feelings. Or emotions. That they are not entirely certain what to do with yet.

It is hard to take some music with you, as you grow, and age. 

And I think some albums, or bands, aren’t intended to be brought with through time. They represent just a specific moment. Something that you can, maybe, return to and at least understand, and respect, what it did for you at that time, and in turn, understand, and respect, why you were unable to bring it with when you are no longer in your late teens, or early 20s. 

There is an enthusiasm, or an exuberance. It is energetic. What you hear on Brace Faces, Everyone. It’s pop-punk. Power pop. Emo. The songs are often anthemic, or triumphant at times, in how they sound, and how they feel. There is a frenetic level of bombast that Spanish Love Songs achieves early on within the record’s structure, and the group manages to maintain it until its final gasp. 

But in that bombast, and in those anthems, it is Slocum’s songwriting, that makes Spanish Love Songs an “emo band” that is explicitly for adults. It’s his writing that makes Brave Faces, Everyone something that I would have been absolutely insufferable about if I had found the album around the time of its release, near the beginning of 2020—an album that I would have carried with me through a terribly long, excruciating year. 

And it is an album that has found me now, though. Five years removed from a version of myself that I never was going to be. And five years into the version of myself I am now. The one who continues to stare down humbling and unflattering reflections of myself from the moment that the album begins, nearly all the way through, until its cathartic, visceral end. 

*

Am I gonna be this down forever?

I am not always attached to the idea of being alive. 

And what I understand is that this does not make me special or unique in any way and it is certainly not a good thing. And it is certainly one of the less endearing characteristics I have. 

Certainly a large contributor to how difficult I am to be around. 

I am remiss to say that I do not wish for it to be something that does ultimately define me, though, because I am uncertain if that is entirely true. 

It does become defining, regardless of any efforts I put in for it not to be.

There is the allure, at least for me and perhaps for you as well, to a kind of melancholy. To sorrow. Pain. Somebody else’s pain and sorrow and the ways you do end up catching glimpses of yourself in it.

And I have, of course, written often—perhaps all too often, about how in the end, a number of albums that I listen to, and find so much of myself within, are allegorical of the human condition.

And I say that I have, perhaps, too frequently, described my experiences with albums in this way, but I think that we are looking for that, in a sense. Or at least I am. There is certainly a kind of escapism within contemporary popular music. And yes, there are moments when we do wish for a brief reprieve from our own miserable existences within the media we consume. The films we watch. The books we read. The music we listen to. But there are times when I think we, or at least I do, and maybe if you are like me you feel similarly, that you wish for things to be humanized. To feel that kind of connection. And to understand. 

Too often, I say there is no cure for the human condition. And I would argue that Brave Faces, Everyone has never thought itself, or touted itself to be a cure for that. But rather, a reflection. One where there is the convergence—it isn’t even slow, or subtle. But a collision. Between the unflinching and the hideous and the brief flashes of beauty that you might still be able to find within.

And I have, of course, written often—perhaps all too often, about “song cycles,” or “concept albums.” About records where the material included is operating at a higher level of intelligence and there is a thread, however loose or tight, connecting all of the songs to one another.

There is an insular nature, in a sense, to Brave Faces, Everyone. Ten songs that are connected, very tightly, and at times, in a kind of self-aware and referential way, that never comes off as cutesy or cloying, but just pulls you further into the bleakness of the world the album creates from the moment it begins. 

Brave Faces, Everyone is an album with a concept. And the concept, I suppose, is the human condition. Or a kind of lived experience that is not unique to just Dylan Slocum or the other members of Spanish Love Songs. I hesitate to use the expression “universal appeal,” because there is nothing appealing about the things that are depicted within these songs. But it is a reality. Our reality, more often than not. Because as dissimilar as we may be, there are things that do make us the same. Specifically if we are of a certain age, and a certain demographic. 

I am even more hesitant to recall the phrase, uttered by Brad Pitt in the 1999 film adaptation of Fight Club—“Our Great Depression is our lives,” but there is some some unfortunate accuracy to how that hangs.

Brave Faces, Everyone is an album with a concept, and in that concept being an exploration of the human condition, pre-Coronavirus pandemic, there is a horrible, eerie foretelling of dread and angst that ripped through our lives before the upheaval but was most certainly made much, much worse beginning in March of 2020, a month after this record’s release. 

It is an album about a lot of things. I mean, there is a lot to unpack, or to work through, within the conceit of the human condition. It is about mental health. Depression. Anxiety. Suicidal ideation. About addiction and substance use disorder. About debt, and how hopeless it all feels sometimes. About fear and paranoia. About the climate crisis. About continuing to push and push to make art and hope it resonates with someone. Anyone. 

For as tongue-in-cheek, or winking, as it can be, with a song title like “Optimism (As A Radical Life Choice),” it should not surprise you to learn that Brave Faces, Everyone is not a hopeful album. The narrative is bleak as it is relentless but that is the human condition isn’t it. But even in not being a hopeful album, it is also not void of hope completely. 

It is an album that still encourages us to try. Because we kind of have to. Don’t we. We continue to show up. Even when everything inside of us is screaming against it. 

Am I gonna be this numb forever?

*

It won’t be this bleak forever

And there is, of course, an urgency to it all. Nearly every song on Brave Faces, Everyone. That has to do with the kind of band Spanish Love Songs is—the genre they are performing from within. Emo music, or power pop, or pop punk, or whatever you wish to call it, has always been an energetic style of music. Often enormous in the heights that it ascends to within the anthems that it creates.

So yes, after a deliberately slow burning and then blisteringly cathartic opening track, the pacing of the album continues to frenetically propel itself forward within the emergent “Self Destruction (As A Sensible Career Choice.)” 

I stop short of saying that Brave Faces is a humorless album. But it also is not, like, inherently funny. 

And there is, of course, a built-in sense of humor, however sophomoric, found within the genre. Within emo bands, or power pop, or pop punk. Or whatever you wish to call it. Often in the song titles themselves—long, clunky, arriving as the punchline to a joke that has not been told yet. A wink or a smirk to the listener. 

And the use of parenthesis in the title of both “Self Destruction” and its counterpart, I suppose, “Optimism (As A Radical Life Choice,)” does lean slightly into that. A little nudge, from the artist to the listener. It’s not intended to be laugh-out-loud funny, but it is also not entirely stoic. Something in between. 

Brave Faces, Everyone is not a humorless album, but the humor that is present is macabre, as one may imagine, and us, as listeners, or at least this life, itself, is often the butt of the joke. The humor if there is any to be found, is in just how bad things can feel—to take the step back, if you are able, and acknowledge the ridiculousness of it all, and laugh, if you can, at it, before you put your head back down and continue on.

But there is an urgency. A jubilance. A bounce even, if you will. To the arranging and how it comes slamming in at the beginning of “Self Destruction,” creating a pulsating rhythm that allows for what is ultimately Slocum’s near pontificating of his lyrics. “All I hear is ‘patience,’” he begins, with an immediacy and edge in his voice. “All I have are missed bank payments. I can’t keep my head above the nonsense,” he continues, unrelentingly. “This ain’t gonna make me famous, but I can’t eat off this paycheck. My dreams are quick-drying cement, slipping through the tips of my fingers.”

That urgency, and inability to outrun his dread, are heightened in the second verse. “It’s like I’m falling deeper and deeper, thinking, ‘Someday I just need a miracle,’” he observes before adding, “Need about thirty goddamn miracles.”

“I’m so preoccupied with my own life I can’t see the world is burning down,” he continues. “’Til we’re living underwater.”

“Self Destruction,” like a number of the songs on the album, is structured around, yes, certainly large-sounding verses that continue to build a momentum that does then burst once the chorus arrives, turning it into a kind of anthem, though it is a pessimistic one at that.

“It won’t be this bleak forever—yeah, right,” Slocum exclaims over the sound of crunchy guitars and thundering percussion. “It won’t be this bleak forever—and I hope you’re right,” he continues, seeking some kind of assurance in the repetition of this expression, and changing the line slightly to further indicate the levels of sheer exasperation and desperation in the final chorus, before the song ends.

“It can’t be this bleak forever.”

*

What I remember are the mornings. 

Not all of them. But enough of them.

I had a boss, for a few years, during the years when things were good, who regularly used a coffee mug that said “Practice Radical Optimism” on it. 

I never openly rolled my eyes or scoffed at it when he drank out of it, but at this time, I was certainly a much more nihilistic and insufferable version of myself, so I did not really understand, or much care for, the kind of sentiments it advertised.

I am older now. Not far removed from who I was less than a decade ago but still removed enough in some ways, and even in my efforts to be less outwardly nihilistic, and my attempts to be less insufferable, I still do not much care for the sentiments, or the suggestion, of practicing a kind of “radical optimism,” though I think, as much as I am able to, I understand it now. 

Or, if anything, I understand why one would wish to practice that. 

We do always wish for there to be a light, however dim, at the end of a long, dark tunnel. We wish for there to be the faintest slivers of hope. 

We do not wish to feel hopeless. Though we certainly often do. 

Placed just after the halfway point, “Optimism (As A Radical Life Choice)” is not a response, exactly, to “Self Destruction”’s call, if you will, and in the titular similarities, one appears to be an antithesis to the other. Turning things musically inward with a more downcast feeling, at least until the bombastic, soaring nature of the chorus arrives, “Optimism” is, lyrically, anything but, as Slocum continues to writhe in his despair—though, here, it is about a much larger picture, as his concern over the climate crisis, and what that means to the habitability of the planet, is one of the central ideas presented.

Opening with a strummed acoustic guitar and sharp, snappy-sounding snare hits, “Optimism” does not begin as a shuffle exactly, but it does take its time gathering sonic momentum. “The pain is back in my chest again,” Slocum exclaims, sounding absolutely deflated by the revelation, in the first line. “Holding me down like a high school friend. Says, ‘The word’s about to end—you best start swimming.’”

“You say, ‘Anxiety is the theme of all our lives these days,’” he continues, before offering up, quickly, a number of poignant, albeit dry societal observations. “Can’t even have my coffee without exploiting someone or making another million or billionaire. What would it take to be happy—I’d probably start with their money.”

“I’m done dying on the inside now that everything is dying on the outside,” he scoffs and laments in the third verse. “The sky is letting go of holding like a crying child. Armageddon on my mind—I’ll try to smile all the time like he’s a construct that I need to make amends or keep myself clean,” he continues, before really punctuating the verse with, “Yes, I’m aware it’s fleeting.”

And there is, of course, a power, or a propulsion, how the chorus hits within “Optimism,” or an emphasis, in how the lyrics are barked and shouted. “Don’t take me out back and shoot me,” Slocum pleads. “I know my circuits are faulty. Now, I’ve only ever been a kid pointing out dead dogs on the road,” he continues, with the imagery continuing to grow more violent. “Take me down in this landslide. Help me weather this high tide. I’ll wear you out waiting for me to implode.”

The slivers of hope, or in this case, a kind of optimism, come in the pleading and intensity that arrives within the song’s bridge section. “Because the ocean’s gonna rise. The river’s finally gonna overflow and leave us stranded,” Slocum howls. “Tryin’ to make it to the other side. But there’s a crack in my lifeboat. And now I’m sinking. Well, I’m sinking—would you sink with me?”

The final line, too, uttered—a last gasp, offers, or asks for a kind of bleak optimism in the ugly face of these realities. “Well, I’ll wear you out watching the world implode, but don’t take me out back and shoot me.”

*

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days

And there is a frenetic nature to all of it. A terrible entropy. 

I remember the mornings. 

Not all of them. But enough of them.

I started walking to work near the end of 2018, and even through all of 2020 and into 2021, when my spouse was only able to work from home and rarely, if ever, ventured out into the world, and certainly did not need to use our only car, I still walked. As a means of exercise, sure. I guess. But really, it was. I was just grateful for the time. A few moments alone. 

For the quiet. 

A small amount of solace. Not even comfort, really. But just the quiet the mornings provided. 

I remember how they felt. When the days were just beginning. When I was bracing myself for what uncertainty I would inevitably face that day. The cigarettes I would sneak one after another as my workbooks thudded against the sidewalk. 

I remember the fleeting dark blue hue of the night surrendering itself to the sunrise, and how it often turned the sky, at least briefly, unspeakably gorgeous pinks and oranges that the photographs I tried to take could never do justice.

I remember the hush of the winter. The snow falling silently.  The whirring sound of a car’s tires on the unplowed streets. The soft crunch of snow, packing down beneath the clomping of my heavy boots as I tried to make these moments of solace last. 

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days.

It all gets to be too much, sometimes, doesn’t it. 

The terrible entropy of it all. And it is something that I, more often than not, find myself overcome by.

The days are unrelenting and continue to ask things of us even if we have given so much, already, and even if we feel like we have little, if anything else, we can offer. We rise. We care for others. We try, and often fail, to care for ourselves. We work. The chores continue to call us. Dishes to be washed. Laundry to be folded and put away. Counters and shelves to be tidied. We pay our bills. Sometimes on time. There never seems to be enough money. We do errands. We buy groceries. We plan meals. We pack lunches. We try not to feel distant from those we are close to, but the distance cannot help itself. We try, and again we often fail, to make time for ourselves—for whatever interests or passions we have remaining. We read for pleasure. We mindlessly scroll on our phones and consume more bad news. We fold into bed and, shut our eyes tightly and hope sleep comes soon, and then the monotony and frenetic nature of it all begins once again.

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days. And you want a break of some kind. But usually just cannot see how that is possible.

“Beach Front Property” arrives at the halfway point of Brave Face, Everyone, closing out the end of the first side. And musically, it is not a departure, exactly, from other songs included in this set, but it does find Spanish Love Songs moving slowly out of the comfort zone of power pop bombast they regularly operate from. There is a sharp inward turn—inherently downcast, or gloomy, though it is anything but dirge in terms of its tempo. There is still a propulsive nature to it—thanks to the writhing, post-punk kind of bass lines and the dextrous percussive work coming from the clattering of the hi-hat cymbal and then the ping of the snare drum. It slithers, in a surprising way, with distended, moody guitar chord strums and melodies played over the top of it, laying the foundation for the narrative descriptions of the verses, before it does work itself into an anthemic frenzy for the chorus.

Slocum’s lyrics here are bleak. And more disaffected, or pessimistic than they are elsewhere on the album. Because for all the moments when there is, like, a search or a want for some hope, or a little sliver of optimism to keep going, there is truly none of that to be found here as he reflects on poverty and debt, a kind of underlying fear we go through our days with, and the sincerity of making art—and the kind of universal frustration, of exasperation we continue to find ourselves at as each day ends.

“It’s the end of days and we’re just hoping for the beach front property,” he begins, with a bit of a sneer in his voice. “Numb with indecision—daring some asshole to take a swing. Got $800 to my name—not sure what it means. Trying to take these bastards for a quarter of a million, despite your mom’s protesting.”

Slocum’s writing, throughout the album, is pretty direct. Or, at the very least, not that difficult to parse through and understand. Though here, it is worth mentioning the specificity of something he says. 

Money—never having enough of it, owing too much of it, etc.- are themes throughout both Brave Faces, Everyone, and the band’s follow-up, No Joy, released in 2023. And I think it is admirable, and refreshing, for someone of a certain age to be writing about this anxiety that many (including myself) have. Because if you are like me, maybe you do not often feel like you can talk about it. Or who to even share your financial lamentations with. 

We were told to go to college because that is simply what you do. I was too stupid, or ill-informed, or whatever, to even have given it a second thought. We are nearing 20 years since I graduated, and for myriad reasons, I am still paying off my student loans. There are times when it has felt like a debt that I would never get out from under, which is what Slocum is talking about here in the line: “Trying to make these bastards for a quarter of a million.”

“They are going to keep charging me interest and by the time I die, I’m going to owe them a quarter of a million dollars,” he explained in an annotation about the song. “Despite that, though, there’s a deep-seated fear for a whole generation of being saddled with an unthinkable debt.”

“I hate the rhythm of our lives these days,” he continues in the second verse. “Stare into a dead space shouting at my phone…you’re sick, and sad, and there are thirty-somethings in a bar—play us some nostalgia songs,” he adds, bitterly. “No one really wants to hear about you anymore. I know.”

The restlessness with life, and the rhythm of our lives these days, and a reluctant resignation to the fact that there is little if anything to be done about it, is what culminates in the larynx-shredding, torrential chorus. 

“If every city is the same,” Slocum begins. “Doom and gloom under a different name—maybe we should find our home in one. We argue and assign the blame. Not like any of us feel the shame—count on one hadn’t all the good we’ve done.”

The song arrives at a terribly stark, and frank conclusion. “I’m tired anyway,” he bellows. “Why the hell would I care? I’m tired anyway.”

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days. 

I am tired anyway. 

*

I am not always attached to the idea of being alive. 

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days. And it is that feeling. The feeling of not always wishing to remain here. That can make the days feel much longer, or much more difficult. 

I remember the mornings. Not all of them. But enough of them. 

Everybody has a story about their lives over the last five years. About what your life was like. And what you thought it might be. The life you were never going to have. The person you were never going to become. What the years gave you instead. How you ended up the way you are now. Everybody has a pandemic story but nobody wants to hear your pandemic story. It’s too soon. Five years is not long enough. Everybody has a story. And your experience, beginning in March of 2020, whatever it was, does not make you special or unique. Everybody has a pandemic story and I never implied that mine was interesting. Though it is my story and it is the life I ended up having, it is what the years gave me instead.

I am not always attached to the idea of being alive.

And this is nothing new. Because there was a time, a number of years before that, when things felt bad in a way that they had never felt bad before but I was, at the time, unwilling to admit to myself or anyone else, certainly, what I was experiencing. And there were the years that were better. Not perfect, but it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like that as often. Not a kind of all encompassing darkness at the start of the day that felt impossible to get out from under.

Everybody has a story about their lives over the last five years, and part of mine is spending the entirety of an appointment with my therapist trying to find the right way to describe what I was feeling. And there is a reluctant acceptance. Eventually. Maybe not that this is how it is going to feel for forever. Maybe not that this is how it is going to feel every day. But this is what it often feels like right now. 

It gets harder, doesn’t it?

In the second half of Brave Faces, Everyone opens with what is one of the album’s most musically intense songs, “Losers.”

And there is a fascinating contrast that occurs in “Losers.” The song itself is relentless—never letting up for one second in its momentum. But within that propulsion forward, and high energy, there are not two extremes, but there are tones that are juxtaposed in a sharp way to I think further make a point with just how torrential and visceral the song becomes in the chorus.

Opening with a ferocious riff on the electric guitar, there is a kind of anthemic triumph that is conjured as the other elements careen in, like the thick, chugging bass notes, the frantic pummel of the drum kit, and then the tasteful punctuation offered by notes coming from the piano keys, finding their space within the furor swirling around in a build-up that does absolutely detonate with startling and cathartic results.

“We’re gonna waste the days getting outpriced of our apartments,” Slocum howls in the opening line. “Hoping we don’—we sure as shit ain’t moving home. Watching television, we’re stealing from our parents,” he continues with a bit of a scoff. “So many opinions on how we live, but there’s no option for even how to get out of bed.”

Musically, then, the tone switches from anthemic bombast to aggression and angst, with the sound of a frantically bashed-on hi-hat cymbal and the noise and sharp crunch of quickly strummed guitar chords, with Slocum shredding his voice through the intensity of what he meticulously screams. “My bleak mind says it’s cheaper just to die. The prick inside my head’s laid off, and daring me to try. And my bleak mind says, ‘This is all you got.’ Hoping all this time, but all you’ll find is it gets harder, doesn’t it?”

The intensity, albeit briefly, recedes for the second verse—lyrically, though, it is much darker than the first. “Won’t see the doctor ’til I’m down on my knees, and blacking out in strip malls to avoid taking care of what’s in front of me,” Slocum laments. “I’ll live my life off points from credit card financing. You’ll stay stuck, losing your jobs. Let’s watch these options pile up, or let’s ask for help.”

Brave Faces, Everyone, in terms of its dynamism, is not really a record that is concerned about trying to find the balance of tension and release. But there is this other kind of give and take that Spanish Love Songs do spend the entirety of the album working out, and in the end, I mean, there isn’t a right or wrong answer to arrive at. But there is this effort to keep pushing toward a sense of hope, however small or fleeting, or, to surrender to completely to the darkness, and how absolutely hopeless it all feels so much of the time. 

And there are, of course, any number of places on the album where this is depicted, but as the intensity recedes during the bridge in “Losers” to a place that is surprisingly contemplative and somber, we do find this rumination on the notion of hope, optimism, or being completely void of both.

“We replaced my broken mattress with another hand-me-down,” Slocum reflects. “Talking nightly about nothing feels like giving up, somehow. Haven’t we faced enough to know this is how it goes,” he asks. “We’re mediocre—we’re losers forever.”

The band, then, does take its time building the song back up, and then leans into a kind of self-aware structural theatrically by taking huge, powerful strums and then giving into the shorts of pauses to really emphasize how emotionally impactful the chorus alone is, before it all slams back together and speeds with a breakneck severity towards the end. 

There is, of course, the rhetorical nature of the question asked, and repeated, throughout “Losers.” A kind of distorted, funhouse mirror inverse of what would commonly be asked as a means of assurance—“It gets better, doesn’t it?” someone may ask or plead, clutching a sliver of hope in their fingers. This is, though, a reluctant kind of resignation. Acknowledging what has always been understood. The sometimes seemingly impossible task of treading water—remaining in that space that exists between hopefulness and hopelessness.

It gets harder, doesn’t it?

*

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days.

And I, of course, am late to my arrival at both Spanish Love Songs and Brave Faces, Everyone—finding the band, and this album, near the close of what was yet another extraordinarily difficult year. 

Late in my arrival, but I am very aware of how I would have been just absolutely insufferable about this album had it been something I was aware of at the time of its release in the early days of 2020. I would have, without a doubt, made it an enormous part of my personality, and it would have been the thing that I turned to regularly as 2020 continued to unfold in the most unfortunate ways. 

I say that with certainty because in finding it, five years after the fact, I catch countless unflattering and humbling glimpses of myself in its reflection. 

There is an irony, I think, to me finding now, when I have, because there have been so many instances, within the last year, when I have been overwhelmed with this understanding that continuing to tread water, as I have been, is not sustainable. And that I am trying. I putting forth a kind of herculean effort of time and discipline in search of a little reprieve. 

There is, of course, the discomfort in that. The potential to be less defined, or no longer defined at all by something, regardless of if you really wished for it to become such a part of you. The discomfort in the uncertainty. Of the time and discipline. The efforts. 

There is, of course, the terrible irony, and there always is, of being in the shadow of what you have known for so long.

There is an ambition to an album like Brave Faces, Everyone. It is, at least at first glance, angst-ridden and raucous. A collection of songs that lean into a style that appeals perhaps to a younger listener, though it is being made by individuals who are within the demographic that has been wearied by the world we are living in. 

But that is why it is ambitious. Why it does operated with a surprising and welcomed level of intelligence in what it depicts and how it depicts it. 

Brave Faces, Everyone is an album that is about a lot of things. Some of those things more than others. And, within that, there are elements to it that I have connected to more than others.

There is an ambition to an album like Brave Faces, Everyone. And part of that ambition comes from how it positions itself. It is always walking the line or trying to find the right balance, between the shreds of hope we hang onto, and the surrender to the bleak, hopelessness that is always right there with us. But there is the other, fascinating balance it strikes, which I have given more and more consideration to the longer I have sat with it as one year came to an end and another began.

There is, of course, a real, often visceral, immediacy to Brave Faces, Everyone. Nearly every song feels like an emergency is taking place. And within that, there is this compelling dichotomy that forms, based on what this album is about, and how what it is about is presented. The stakes have seemingly never been higher, but they are also the lowest they’ve ever been. 

Nothing matters. But everything matters.

This is an album about a lot of things. Anxiety, overall, yes, and anxieties about specific things. Like the climate. Like money. It’s an album about depression. A kind of sadness that seemingly knows no end. About the choices we make in life, where those take us, and at what point we start to write ourselves off as failures. 

As a songwriter, Dylan Slocum is intensely personal in what he writes about and what details he chooses to reveal within the world of each song. And there these allusions, though in what they imply, it is intentionally ambiguous as to if he is writing about himself, or the experience of someone else. 

Sequenced midway through the album’s first half, “Generation Loss” is one of the songs that, musically, follows a pretty standard structure for high theatricality in terms of the enormous heights it swings towards in the anthemic chorus while bringing itself back to a swirling, quickly paced simmer during the verses. So I am, as a listener, less interested in how the song is packaged and more so with a number of the phrase turns within its lyrics and the kind of cobbled-together bleak depiction it portrays. 

“You twenty-nine-year panic attack,” Slocum yelps at the top of the song. “And not the fashionable kind. The kind where you wake up and say, ‘Man, I just wanna survive.’”

“But this world is short on empathy—you got out of your parent’s place,” he continues, with the narrative then shifting into a starker description of this individual. “Started making money—crashed your car, and now they want your laces.”

“They gave you just enough to make you feel like you fucked up when you realized you couldn’t keep yourself clean,” he adds in the build-up before the enormous shout-a-long of the chorus.

“We’re so fucking tired of explaining ourselves,” he screams. “We throw a pill down our throat or ourselves into the ocean. ‘Cause half of our friends are dead and the other half are depressed. In this budget-rate life, the borderline’s looking thin.”

And there is just something impressive, I think, and certainly impactful about the choice of language in “Generation Loss,” and what it conveys. The blunt exasperation rings through clearly within the chorus and the unflinchingly honest, literate descriptions within the verses. 

*

Am I gonna be this down forever?

What I remember are the mornings. 

Not all of them. But enough of them. 

And I guess I remember how a number of them felt because it is something I continue to associate with a different time. Who I was in the mornings from years, and years ago now, when the fleeting dark blue hue of the night surrendered itself to the sunrise and the sky would briefly turn these unspeakably gorgeous pink and oranges that despite all of my efforts, photographs would never truly do justice to what I was like to be in these moments of solace.

Things were good, once. Until they no longer were. I guess that’s the easiest way to explain it. Everybody has a pandemic story, but no one wants to hear your pandemic story, and it doesn’t make you special or unique—whatever experience you lived. How you felt safe going to your job one day and then the next day you didn’t. And all of the years that came before it that were good and where things maybe didn’t feel as dark started to mean less and less because you were no longer that version of yourself, and all you could see ahead of you were the endless, bleak days. 

Brave Faces, Everyone is bookended with absolutely its finest moments and opens with the slow-burning, explosive “Routine Pain,” which, in terms of all the ideas crammed into it, as it oscillates through tempo and intensity, serves as a thesis statement for the album as a whole.

Opening with a squall of feedback that fades in, Spanish Love Songs, in terms of their aesthetic, do play their hand quickly, though cleverly, as “Routine Pain” begins, and almost immediately begins building a momentum that the band never lets up. The distended, melancholic guitar strums underneath Slocum’s vocals give way to the quickly tapped-out cymbal, keeping aggressively fast time. And there are, of course, the big, powerful, punctuative moments before the drums really come in, at the second verse, propelling the song forward with a kind of blistering punk rock sneer. 

The band, yes, covers a lot of ideas, or themes, across the four minutes and change of “Routine Pain,” and they do it while shifting the pacing of the song throughout—heightening the sense of drama that the lyricism requires. The music does become torrentially intense by the time it hits the third and final verse, with Slocum’s voice reaching towards an anguished scream. This all, then, recedes for the hushed delivery of the contemplative bridge, which builds back to enormous, theatrical heights for a tumbling, slow-motion final movement that creates the first of many truly cathartic, exhaustive moments on the album.

And I am, of course, admittedly late to Spanish Love Songs. Arriving here at the end of 2024, with their most recent effort, No Joy, as my original point of entry, before working my way backward—not all the way back to the group’s first two albums. Not yet. But working my way back to Brave Faces, Everyone. 

And it is, I think, for the best, really, for myself and for everyone I would have known five years ago, that this was a band and an album that I was just simply not aware of. Because what I know to be true is that I would have been absolutely insufferable about it. I would have, as the spring, turned into the summer, into the fall, and into the winter, and things just continued to feel worse, and worse—I would have made so much of this album my personality. 

And it is, of course, difficult not to do that now. 

I think, upon initially spending time with No Joy, that Spanish Love Songs were a band that would become important to me. But I guess I was not expecting, that within the first song on Brave Faces, Everyone, that I would feel so seen—not called out, exactly, but it is that mirror casting the unflattering reflection back at you. I was not anticipating I would be so moved, and I continued to be so moved the further I listened and the longer I spent with the album.

“On any given day, I’m a six of ten,” Slocum begins. “Bed, to desk, to bar—eyes on the floor. Still apologizing for the way I’ve been. Each breath more full of shit than the one before.”

And there is a misanthropic, nihilistic nature to the lyricism through many of the songs on Brave Faces, Everyone. A kind of self-effacing despair. Feelings that are ugly, and are certainly not a place to spend a lot, if not all, of your time, ruminating, but they are the feelings that I understand, and unfortunately, there is a comfort in them, or at least a familiarity. 

“On any given day, it hurts to stand up straight,” Slocum continues in the second verse, then later, adding, “These past four months, I’ve been so angry—I’m not alright,” before concluding with, “And I’m so sick of saying sorry when I cry.”

Before the song shifts into its arresting finale, the plea that “Routine Pain” returns to is Slocum’s asking, “Let me ruin my guts tonight.” And there is a kind of breaking of the fourth wall, in a way, as the song unfolds. Not a direct address of the audience or the listener, but an acknowledgment of the strange dynamic that exists between the artist and who is consuming the art. “Could you please come look right through me and try to give a reason why,” he barks in the second verse. “I don’t know you, or why you care, but the devil’s loose inside.”

Or, within the anguish of the third verse, when you can hear the strain in his vocal cords. “On any given day, I’m out to break your heart. On any day, you’ll bleed me my self-worth.”

And for as much of myself as I found within the first portion of “Routine Pain,” the real attraction, for me, to the song, is within its final 90 seconds.  

The song itself falls to a near hush, for the bridge, before it quickly works itself back up until a frenzy, with Slocum quietly recalling portions of a conversation with someone. “Everywhere I look, it’s just routine pain,” he observes. “I’m so sick of treading water.”

The build-up comes in the form of four questions, asked while the music churns and grows underneath before the explosive, revelatory finale. 

“Am I gonna be this down forever,” he asks. “Am I gonna be this dumb forever? Am I gonna be this gone forever? Am I gonna be this numb forever?”

And it is, I think, really for the best. For myself, and everyone I would have known five years ago. That Spanish Love Songs is a band, and Brave Faces, Everyone were simply things I was not aware of. Because as “Routine Paine” comes crashing down in its final moments, it is the kind of thing I would have been absolutely insufferable about. 

It is the kind of song that, from the very first time I stood, the wind knocked out of me while listening, to now, months later, as I attempt to both analytically write about this album while shoehorning a personal narrative around it, that sends an emotive jolt through me. 

It is the kind of song, and this is the kind of album, that I would have listened to on those mornings. The walks. Sometimes, but not all of the time. But some of the time I would listen to music, as I trudged, with the sun just coming up in the distance. Or with the snow crunching beneath me. Or the rain tumbling down while I huddled as much of myself as I could under the shelter of an umbrella. I would listen to things, as the months of 2020 progressed, from the spring into the summer, then into the fall, then into the winter, and back again, that would intentionally upset me. 

“Have you ever felt lower than everyone else?,” Slocum screams at the end of “Routine Pain.” “I’m feeling lower than anyone else. ‘Cause everything’s lower than everything else. I wanna see how much lower we can go.”

Am I gonna be this down forever?

I am, of course, so so sick of treading water. 

*

I’m always looking up, and you’re jumping

And for a while now, certainly over the last three years, and maybe longer than that, actually, but I do remember the moment when I was, with accuracy, able to articulate what I was trying to describe—but, for a while now, I have been fascinated with the idea of both running away from something, while simultaneously running towards it, and most of the time, the thing you are running from, or that is straight ahead, is yourself.

And I do worry, of course, that I am in over my head. Almost always. And if you will forgive me, as I, at least temporarily, break the fourth wall. I make these attempts, as writers often do within the confines of an essay or creative non-fiction, to pull together a handful of different ideas and hope that, as I reach the end, I have figured out a way to at least somewhat successfully bring them together. You hope that you have written yourself into the ending that you have earned.

And in trying to pull together any number of different, potentially overlapping ideas—i.e., an album released five years ago that I just recently heard, what living with chronic passive suicidal ideation is like, a job that was good until it wasn’t—you do worry, or, at least, I worry, that I have gotten in over my head once again. That, in my ambition, and my insistence on writing myself into an analysis of contemporary popular music, I will not be able to write myself back out.

My best friend asked me what I was working on, when I was still at the halfway point of this, and still finding my way through, and the rhythm I wished for it to take, and I said it was a reflection on an album that was turning five, but also a consideration of who I might be if the last five years had happened differently—specifically, how I would feel. 

I am not always attached to the idea of being alive. 

I wonder if it was always going to be this way. Regardless.

If Brave Faces, Everyone begins with a thesis statement, and an introduction of a number of the ideas that are presented as the rest of the album unfolds, it ends with a recapitulation of sorts—a desperate, final, exhaustive gasp of catharsis.

The album’s titular track is, both musically, and in terms of its lyricism, the most unrelenting found on the album—a song designed, from the moment it begins until the final syllable is uttered, to not only be the last track on the album, but also to be the most enormous and emotionally resonant in its scope.

“Brave Faces, Everyone” wastes no time in terms of the kind of exuberant tempo it wishes to keep and launches itself headfirst, with the sharp, snapping ricochet of the snare drum, the chugging of the bass, and the ferocious, unrelenting, crunching of the distorted electric guitar chords all coming together within the instant the song begins. And this kind of frenetic energy is sustained throughout the verse, until the band slams into the chorus, which does absolutely rain down torrentially in how aggressively the instruments pummel over and over—again, the band here, as they do most notably in “Routine Pain,” playing with the balance of tone and tempo as a means of heightening the theatricality, and really punctuating the visceral emotions depicted, as the song itself careens, seemingly out of control at times, towards its stunning conclusion.

Lyrically, Slocum, like the instrumentation surging underneath him, moves breathlessly as he crafts one final bleak narrative within the world of the album, and it is within this—everything just moving so quickly, as the song begins, that it creates that feeling. Of running away from something as fast as you can while also running towards it in a desperate sprint with the hope that there is the potential for something better on the horizon.

“Sometimes I wanna vanish completely and call in sick from life,” Slocum laments early in the song’s first verse. “I woke up and didn’t feel better—I don’t know why I act surprised. At least each year is getting shorter and the ocean’s on the rise.”

“I’m terrified there’s no more waiting,” he continues. “I’m running out of what comes next. Running through jobs I’m gonna hate—living paycheck to paycheck like my parents, and their parents, and their parents before them.”

There is, of course, a terrible, palpable sense of urgency to so many of the songs on Brave Faces, Everyone. That, I would think, is something that you understand at this point. But there are some songs that are exponentially more urgent than the others—the immediacy boiling over, with no real way to make it stop. “Routine Pain” does, as it continues to unfold and turn, become one of those moments, as does the titular track—a kind of “all or nothing” anthem that propels you forward, hurling you into the seemingly unending void of sorrow and anxiety.

I am remiss to say that, as the song continues, every lyric is as important, if not more important, or poignant, than the one before it, but the impactful, resonant nature of “Brave Faces, Everyone” continues to build until it all comes tumbling down in the final moments.

“I saw a sign in Hanover that said ‘The Future is in Motion,’” Slocum continues in the second verse.”But the motion has me sick. It’s okay—I’m sick of standing. I’m still paying off a good idea from when I was 23. A life spent living off loans when I still don’t know what I love. I’m over-leveraged—my credit’s gone weak,” he confesses, reflecting on something that perhaps you often do, as I find myself doing more and more—an existence of financial mismanagement, at times as a means of survival, and a deeply rooted sense of regret over my college education, and what it has ultimately gotten me, two decades after the fact.

“Brave Faces, Everyone,” as it spirals through the growing, emergent nature of its chorus, and its bridge, continue to tread that line—that intersection of wishing to cling to whatever fraying strands of hope, or optimism, you have left, or just giving in completely to your anguish, and frustration, and reluctantly resigning yourself to this being “it.”

“This world, it has no empathy,” Slocum screams. “We’ll never find our own place. And if nothing gets better, it’s as bad as it seems,” he continues, before adding, “Why can’t we say ‘fuck it’—you know it’s not what we need.”

I’m always looking up, and you’re jumping.

Things are, of course, open to interpretation. 

Specifically, within contemporary popular music. We can hear a lyric, or find ourselves within a song, and we can take those words and make them mean something for us, even if the original intention of the songwriter, was something entirely different. 

And out of all of the phrase turns within “Brave Faces, Everyone,” there are, of course, so many that I do see very humbling, and sobering, reflections of myself in. But within the chorus, where the titular phrases are utter, as a bit of a sneering, sardonic aside, there is one expression that has haunted me since I first sat down with the album, as one extremely difficult year came to an end, and another one began.

I’m always looking up, and you’re jumping.

In a Twitter Q&A about what different lyrics are in reference to, about a year after the album was released, Slocum explained that the line, “I’m always looking up, and you’re jumping,” is connected to the subject matter of “Generation Loss,” as well as, as he puts it, “fear for all of my friends in general.”

And there is a kind of dream-like nature to it. That image. How shadowy, or ambiguous it is. But how vivid, and evocative it is within the same breath. Catching a moment, as it’s happening. Perhaps too late to intervene. 

There is a kind of loneliness, or sadness to it.

It is haunting. But it is beautiful. Isn’t it. A terrible kind of beauty. 

There is something alluring about it. Unsettling, but so compelling.

“Brave Faces, Everyone” ends with a brief, exhausted afterward of sorts—an effort to, as much as one can, reconcile with as many of the larger themes that the album presents over its run. There are no answers, easy or otherwise. More of just a long, exasperated sigh, and the stark, sometimes overwhelming realization that even in the face of little, if any optimism, or hope, we keep going.

“I’m sick of yelling at strangers—don’t wanna do this forever,” Slocum confesses. “And when it all burns down, will you carry me over? We don’t have to fix everything at once,” he continues, trying to offer some assurance. 

“We were never broken—life’s just very long.”

*

I hate the rhythm of our lives these days.

I remember the mornings. Not all of them, of course. Individually. But enough of them. How they felt. The way the sky turned pink and orange during the sunrise. The hush that covered everything when the snow gently tumbled from the sky, piling up on the sidewalks and streets.

The crisp air. The way the leaves would turn and then slowly fall.

I think about the last five years and wonder if it was always going to be this way, for me, regardless of what had happened. I remember the mornings. From the days when things were good, and the days when things were increasingly becoming worse, and worse, all the way through until the end when it was no longer sustainable and hadn’t been for a long time.

I am not always attached to the idea of being alive. And I think about the last five years, and how exhausting it can be to have been treading water for this long.

Life’s just very long. I agree with that part of the line near the end of “Brave Faces, Everyone.”

I don’t agree with the first part. We were broken. Or, at least, I was. I still am.

There is a life I would have lived if it weren’t for the one that I have now.

Everybody has a pandemic story, but no one wants to hear your pandemic story because it doesn’t make you special or unique. How the years broke you down in ways unexpected and in ways you more than likely may never recover from.

My best friend and I, who have only known each other for not even three years at this point, often wonder if we would have gotten along as well as we do now if we had met under different circumstances or at a different point in our lives. With how insufferable I am capable of being and how much more insufferable I certainly was five or six years ago, what I arrive at is that it is for the best we did not know one another any earlier than when we met, by chance, in a book group.

There was a time, in the years when things were okay, or felt more manageable, and my relationship with mortality was not as flimsy as it has been for the last five years now, that I was still considerably not optimistic, or hopeful, about the immediate future. I am remiss in describing myself during this time as an alarmist, but there were times when I felt preoccupied with the sustainability of the planet in the face of the growing climate crisis. 

Even when I was slightly more attached to the idea of being alive, I had certainly developed a bleak, or macabre sense of humor, and often wondered, sometimes aloud, how far I would make it. 

There was a borderline nihilistic streak in me that, within the last few years, has thankfully receded, because it is of course an unattractive, or at least unappealing quality. 

But it is still present, regardless.

And I have, for the bulk of my life, been drawn to a kind of melancholy. And I understand, of course, that it does not always behoove one to listen to an artist, or an album, or a song that is going to intentionally upset them. 

And yet.

I am, of course, arriving very late to both Spanish Love Songs, and to Brave Faces, Everyone, but in finding my way to this album, four months ago, it is the kind of album, in all of its themes, and in all of the unflattering reflections it casts, and poignant, harrowing observations it makes—it is the kind of album that does, without even batting an eyelash, pull you back into a place that you may not wish to spend a lot of time in, but it is a place that you know well. The kind of album, in its honest and unflinching depictions, evokes a visceral, emotional response, and asks you to face the parts of yourself that you are, if you are like me, always trying to outrun but are not enough steps ahead. 

I am sure that, at the time of its release, it was an enormous statement and leap forward for Spanish Love Songs, because even now, five years later, there is a revelatory nature to it for ears hearing it for the first time.

It is an album that, for as late as I am in arriving, I am grateful to have arrived at all.

Am I gonna be this down forever?

Brave Faces, Everyone ends with a clinging to what hope, or optimism there is left to be found. A kind of inevitable resignation. I am not always attached to the idea of being alive, but I am still here, and if you are like me, you are exhausted from treading water, and it is not sustainable, but you continue to try. And there is some comfort in that. 

I remember the mornings. Not all of them. But enough of them. How they felt. And I remember the terrible kind of loneliness that still echoes. Which is why if you are like me you continue to cling.

In explaining, albeit briefly, what the line in “Brave Faces, Everyone” means, Spanish Love Songs’ lyricist Dylan Slocum explained that it comes from a fear for all of his friends, in general. Which is why if you are like me you continue to cling. To the tattered, fraying shreds of whatever optimism you can muster. To the side of those who have shown how they care, and how they need you to remain here even though they know you are sick of treading water. 

I’m always looking up. 

You’re jumping.