Spanish Love Longs Hit Peak Adult Emo With 'Haunted'

LA-formed punk rockers Spanish Love Songs have made waves within the emo music circuit over the last ten years, and with their new song, Haunted, they’ve hit peak adult emo.

Infusing elements of Bruce Springsteen-inspired nostalgia and percussive acoustic guitar that build to some of the band’s biggest hooks yet, Spanish Love Songs bring summer vibes to a chilly Australian autumn and upcoming winter.

The video, directed by Hannah Hall, is a quirky view into a bar as the band set the scene: everyone has a good time at a Spanish Love Songs show. Check out the clip below.

“Haunted is a reintroduction of sorts for us,” vocalist and guitarist Dylan Slocum explained in a statement. “It lays out exactly the band we are at the moment, and after nine months of writing and recording, we knew it had to be the first to come out. We were ecstatic to bring it to life with Hannah.”

Haunted comes from the band’s upcoming fourth studio album, No Joy. If 2020’s Brave Faces Everyone was packed with richly personal, no-holds-barred lyricism awash in existential dread, hyper-personal cultural ruminations and attempts to answer life’s big questions; No Joy provides an exhale after that intensity. 

Not so much a typical follow-up to an emotionally cathartic album, the new release from Spanish Love Songs resembles the calm after the storm.

No Joy is the sound of 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 shared.

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.

Slocum added about the band’s intention to find peace in an increasingly stressful and bleak world, “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 will be released on Friday, 25 August, via Pure Noise Records. You can pre-order the album here.