Album Review: Spanish Love Songs - Brave Faces Everyone

Fans of Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties or Say Anything ought to get onto this album immediately. While still filling your emo heart, Spanish Love Songs stay relevant with distinctive and gut-wrenching stories that are not just personal, but eerily political. The Californian band cover addiction, climate change and mass shootings, to name a few.

Kick is not only one of the catchiest tunes on the ten-track album, it’s also one of the band's most poignant tracks to date. Its opening line, “When you saw your dad shoot up for the first time/It must've come as quite a shock,” will be enough to grip you. And then just when you think the album can’t get any grittier, we hear Dolores: “Shirt speckled red, you're holding onto a young girl’s hand/So frail and cold, so casual/Not even the last one today.” There is a sense of broody optimism in closing track Brave Faces, Everyone as it uses that titular line for a powerful final statement.

Spanish Love Songs absolutely nail confessional punk - it’s been a while since we’ve caught so many feels from a record of this nature. Lead singer Dylan Slocum was made for this gig, perfecting the American emo sound with his angsty tone and fist-clenching stories. The rest of the band are perfectly cohesive and together they just might make emo great again.