SPANISH LOVE SONGS - NO JOY
There are some artists, songwriters specifically, who know how to fulfill the basic needs of the listener in the timespan of three to four minutes. They’ve applied the formula to their songs: an alluring beginning, a quotable, catchy chorus, maybe a bridge thrown in occasionally for panache and an ending that feels just as ‘fun’ as the opening statement.
When listening to these formulaic tunes, you often can take an educated guess as to where they’re heading and be right about 70% of the time because you’ve probably heard the same kind of song before no matter the band, singer, genre, or decade. Of course what I’m describing is the pop music canon that has the tendency to become a little oversaturated with the same ole, same ole. Then you go down the rabbit hole, which may be an accidentally discovered playlist on a streaming platform or an Instagram page dedicated to exposing users to what their individual algorithms might have missed.
In these niche, under the radar places, you end up finding bands like Spanish Love Songs. Groups that test the parameters of what their music can do, allowing it to stretch itself into more than just a short, entertaining ditty. Spanish Love Songs makes the type of music that sustains you. It lingers like a feeling that you don’t want to leave you but walk beside you wherever you go. In their fourth album, No Joy, Spanish Love Songs leaves us with the type of music you never want to forget.
The feverish allure of this album rests in the group's ability to pick you up, drop you into a specific moment in time whether good or bad, pluck you out at the end, and sit you back down in your chair so that you can assess the feelings that are mustered from the music.
Spanish Love Songs creates music that is slightly emo-leaning minus the black eyeliner and long hair with bangs to match. It’s less brash and more gentle; delicate but certainly not fragile. Imagine that a small circle of musicians, who maybe in another lifetime had been those ultra-emo rockers, had gotten older, grown and regressed, died and been resurrected, and exchanged those rose-colored glasses for some that are clearer, but tinted with hints of stalwart optimism and hope. You’ll end up with a group like Spanish Love Songs whose essence roots in sentimentality and the beauty of knowing that it may not be alright now but eventually it will be.
We can hear it in the ethereal vocals of lead singer and guitarist Dylan Slocum. Every song opens up with a line sung by Slocum that encourages you to listen further and see how the story ends. ‘Pendulum’, one of the album’s leading tracks, begins with Slocum stating to no one in particular that he usually begins his day trying to ward off the evil that comes his way. “The vampires come at four in the morning / Out for blood with their spotlight on me.”
‘Pendulum’, is embedded with confessions of love, revelations of heartache, and innate fears that encompass the humanity of the band’s songs. Acceptance and contentment is key but not all that will sustain you is their motto. “I’m changing in a visceral way / We won’t get what we want cause we can’t sort it out /We might get what we want but what good will that do?”
Some songwriters aren’t poets, but lyricists. They have mastered the use of great rhyme schemes and catchy punchlines. Poets seem to have an innate understanding of language’s power to transform. They know how to propel a word into the stratospheres of godliness. The songwriters of Spanish Love Songs are both. ‘Clean Up-Crew’ is evidence of that. The theme revolves around feelings of powerlessness, which in some cases is shown and not told throughout the song. “You had me there a second / I start to believe that we could make it / It’s just like life to come teach me a lesson, but every time I swear I forget it.”
The threads into the chorus where Slocum begins to accept failure and allow fate to do its job. “I whistle while I work but the work is gone / So let the clean up-crew just come eat me alive.” The same goes for songs like ‘Haunted’. It feels preachy and not from a hypocritical or judgemental place, but in the manner of one friend to another, encouraging them to realize “You sleep with a window open and you hope the cold gets in your heart / But you’re not haunted / You just miss everything / You’re not a ghost, so stop disappearing.”
There’s effervescence wrapped around the lyrics of No Joy. The writing contains incredible insight into the commonalities of pain, passion, and everything that comes with it. Fully exploring the textures of expressions as well its boundaries, No Joy teems with life, definitely an enjoyable work of art for anyone who appreciates the gusto of underground indie bands.
Alana Brown-Davis
★★★★☆