Spanish Love Songs have just announced that they will be releasing their new album, No Joy, on August 25th via Pure Noise Records. The album is the band’s highly-anticipated follow-up to 2020’s acclaimed Brave Faces Everyone.

Along with the album announcement today, Spanish Love Songs have released the album’s first single and music video, “Haunted.” The song is immediately catchy, reeling the listener in with new-wave inspired synths — a stark contrast perhaps to what fans have heard before from the band. However, Spanish Love Songs have managed to further retool their sound successfully, and in “Haunted” have a song that is sure to be an immediate fan-favorite.

The music video, directed by Hannah Hall, can be found below as well.

“Haunted is a reintroduction of sorts for us,” explains vocalist and guitarist Dylan Slocum. “It lays out exactly the band we are at the moment, and after 9 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”

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 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.”

Artwork:

Spanish love songs 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:

May 18 – Cleveland, OH – Mahall’s (SOLD OUT)
May 19 – Detroit, MI – Sanctuary (SOLD OUT)
May 21 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie (SOLD OUT)
May 27 – Hatfield, UK – Slam Dunk Festival
May 28 – Leeds UK – Slam Dunk Festival
With HOT MULLIGAN
Aug 31 – Kingston, UK – Pryzm
Sept 1 – Leeds, UK – Stylus
Sept 2 – Manchester, UK – Academy 2
Sept 3 – Glasgow, UK – SWG3
Sept 5 – Nottingham, UK – Rescue Rooms
Sept 6 – Bristol, UK – SWX
Sept 7 – London, UK – Electric Ballroom
Sept 8 – Birmingham, UK – O2 Academy 2
Sept 10 – Eindhoven, NL – Effenaar
Sept 11 – Cologne, DE – Club Volta
Sept 12 – Hamburg, DE – Logo
Sept 13 – Berlin, DE – So36
Sept 15 – Münster, DE – Skaters Palace
Sept 16 – Munich, DE – Strom
Sept 17 – Weisbaden, DE – Schlachthof
Sept 18 – Antwerp, BE – Trix