Spanish Love Songs
No Joy

After the sparkling debut with "Giant Sings the Blues" and a more than solid confirmation with "Schmaltz," "Brave Faces Everyone" opened the doors for Spanish Love Songs to what still stands today as the most interesting byproduct of punk rock. It's something halfway between indie rock and midwestern emo, a fertile ground once explored by bands like The Wonder Years, Bayside, and The Mezingers.

With "No Joy," Slocum and company veer towards sounds lightened by 80s new-wave hues that manage to juxtapose heavy lyrical content with fun instrumental fills and synth-forward elements that make you want to dance and sweat away the pain.

But there's more: "Brave Faces Everyone" was a slide presentation of the most significant episodes in common human experience on a rough, abrasive canvas that captured and held colors, returning a grainy overall picture. Through its cracks, one could find and recognize their own personal expression of discomfort. Faced with such slides, the most sensible thing to do was to gather the necessary strength to barely match a world that was increasingly bleak.

In contrast, "No Joy" offers us the perspective of someone trying to painstakingly conquer any sort of inner peace, happiness in what they have.

It might be one's best moment or not, but you have to strive to find inside it the reason to "stay alive out of spite."

"Haunted" is an example of how the band is firing on all cylinders: naïve synthesizers frame a painting that at first glance might seem sad and miserable, but whose overall view tells a different story:

'You're not haunted, you just miss everything. You're not a ghost, so stop disappearing.'

[...]

'It'll always be this bleak, but it's a way to live'

The lyrical motif of "Brave Faces Everyone" is revisited, where the suggestion was that things wouldn't actually be this bleak forever.

It seems that the 'new normal' (the pivot of the previous release) has turned out to be little more than a bitterly disappointing recalibration of what we can expect from our lives.

But there is hope, and it vibrates strong in these songs. It lives in the relationships we have.

The world might have gone to hell, never to return to what we knew, but there is inherent value and depth in the exchanges we have, in the way we can approach twists with the same sarcasm as Dylan Slocum, as long as we have someone by our side who understands us. And in most cases, that someone will have our same scars, so they'll need us too.

This is the kind of music that demands to be played live; they're misfortunes on life and anthems that tackle the human condition. Both can only be elevated by hundreds of people singing them in perfect unison.

We need to start talking about Spanish Love Songs in the light they deserve, that of one of the great modern alternative bands.

There's no need to narrow it down further because it simply isn't necessary.

It might not bring joy in itself, but this record provides a sense of comfort, understanding, unity, and yes, even cheerfulness.

Literally or metaphorically.