Upset is Dork's go-to playlist for the best new heavy music, where urgent guitars and boundary-pushing bands meet moments that hit hard.
Greg Barnett was sitting next to his grandmother. She grabbed his hand. They were watching a slideshow together; photographs of her life passed on the screen. In one shot, she was 37, the same age as her grandson, the singer in The Menzingers, is now. She had kids. She was living her life to the full, doing it all. "Oh, I just want to go back," she told him. "It was so intense," he recalls. She was 93. She died not long after.
Last Autumn, while he was still 37, his wife gave birth to their daughter. The woman who wanted to go back was looking at the life he is living right now.
'Everything I Ever Saw' is the eighth album from The Menzingers, and its title track carries the weight of that memory in its chorus. "I don't want to relive / I just want to remember everything I ever saw," he sings. It is an album about the impulse to capture life while you're still inside it.
"I've got to appreciate all of this that's happening right now," Greg says. "To me, it's about being present, and I have to say it over and over because I'm not somebody who's present. I'm always looking to the next song, the next tour, the next travel experience. I'm not invested in these moments."
His daughter has just learned to stand and crawl. He is already thinking about when she'll walk. It's no surprise that Greg hasn't felt like writing about heartache for this album. Instead, he wrote songs about the things that bring him joy. "Maybe the right stars have aligned," he sings on the opening track 'Chance Encounters' as he enshrines the first time he met his now-wife in song.
While he brought those song ideas to their rehearsal space, the band's other songwriter, Tom May, had some life-changing songs of his own. He was getting a divorce. "It's like two polar opposites," Greg laughs.
"Tom doesn't typically write heartache songs, but he's in that world," he adds. Tom's experience led him to write songs like 'The Fool', which charts a destructive path of deprecation.
Greg admits it was hard to see his friend struggle. "A lot of times when people ask what the album's about, I'm quick to give my perception about living in the moment. For me, it's very much that.
"And then I was like, I don't know if Tom wanted to be living in the moment, going through a divorce. It's an interesting thing having two singers and two different perspectives," he says.
The only way they could make it work was by embracing their differing outlooks and not overthinking if it would meld as a complete album. "I guess I never asked him if he felt he was living in the moment," Greg reflects. "He took a bad situation and became better for it, became the person he always wanted to be.
"Maybe that's him living in the moment and understanding it in the same way as I was trying to be present and focused during that time," he concludes. In response to Tom's hardship, Greg wrote 'Nobody's Heroes'. "Gotta keep your head up / I know it's easier said than done", he rallies.
While the principal songwriting for 'Everything I Ever Saw' came from two very different perspectives, it manages to achieve what Greg set out to accomplish. It captures the full spectrum of life: the good, the bad and the ugly.
"I've got to appreciate all of this that's happening right now"
Thankfully, in their 20 years, The Menzingers have form of making the best of the curveballs life throws. 'After The Party' and 'On The Impossible Past' both centred around life-changing events, and, for Greg, the same feelings surfaced when writing for this album. "Those were pivotal moments in our lives," he explains, so the key was to capture them. To do that, the band didn't have to travel far. "These songs were so personal. Recording them in our own neighbourhood made it okay to feel vulnerable in that way," Greg explains.
Two blocks from his house (which was convenient with a heavily pregnant wife at home), they reunited with Will Yip in his new studio in South Philadelphia. "The Menzingers have always been such a location-based band. We sing about Asbury Park, Chicago, New York City, Philly. These places, the stories of these places, are so tied in with the band. This was an extension of that.
"If we're going to write an album about being in the moment of these last couple of years, it felt like it had to take place here, had to be recorded here, had to exist in Philly."
Having spent 18 of the last 20 years as a band living in the same neighbourhood, they were right at home in making the album. Recording became an extension of their time in their practice space, where there are no bad ideas. They took half-baked concepts and songs with no arrangements to the studio and worked with Will on them there.
The producer had worked with The Menzingers on both 'After The Party' and 'Hello Exile'. Much like working in their own neighbourhood, Will's return was like a homecoming. "Will is our family. He's always been our family. He's always been like the fifth band member," Greg adds.
The producer's return adds to a feeling of familiarity across 'Everything I Ever Saw'. That's not to say this album is safe by any means, though. Tom, in particular, really tried to push the envelope this time around. His growing love for electronic music laid the foundations for many of his ideas.
'Chance Encounters' started life this way, with Greg rising to the challenge of writing to a song that didn't begin life on an acoustic guitar. It wasn't quite right, and it went on the shelf for awhile. "We struggled for a while with what to do with it," Greg admits. They considered burying it in the album as an electronic instrumental track, but Will saw its potential. Together, they stripped it down and then built it back up with a robust tone. Now, it sounds like a driving rock anthem indicative of the charm and power The Menzingers have shown throughout their 20 years, but, for a time, it was a new creative process for them.
Despite that, small electronic flourishes did make the final cut. Traces can be found in the warm organ sound of 'Better Angels' and throughout 'Gasoline & Matches'; another track that underwent a metamorphosis. One that nearly led to a whole new band.
While there is a spirit of creative freedom and "no bad ideas", when Greg brought his first idea for the new album with the plan of creating a side-project that sounded like The National, he was met with some raised eyebrows from his bandmates. "Originally, I thought it was a little too indie for us, so I pitched: 'Why don't we just start a whole other band and make all these weird slow indie-type songs?'"
It didn't take long to convince him they could turn it into a song fitting the spirit of The Menzingers. It was a timely reminder that there is still a distinct definition of what is and what is not a Menzingers song.
"It feels like everything I needed to say has been said"
What still remains a feature of The Menzingers is the occasional flash of fire when it comes to politics. "It just felt like it would be insane not to say something," Greg says.
Having sung "America I love you but you're freaking me out" and seen it become more and more apt by each passing scandal, on this album, Tom takes aim at their Grifter-in-Chief bleeding Americans dry on 'Other People's Money'. For all the anger behind it, there is a playfulness to the song that Tom wrote. "I love how Beatles-simplistic the chorus is for something with that subject matter. It reminds me of something Paul McCartney would write. Just a little ditty," he adds.
There is a familiarity and ease to how they made this album come together. Choices which helped them be more present and not have to sweat the logistics as much. For all their pursuit of comfort and convenience, the last thing you can accuse the band of is complacency. It's a heavier, faster, more urgent and energised version of The Menzingers.
"Bands, when they're 20 years in, have to punch the clock and give their label another record. It is definitely not that. It sounds like how we experience Philadelphia, the four of us, our life here," Greg summarises.
Ultimately, it's another entry for the soundtrack to Greg's own slideshow. In his 90s, there will still be photos, but also albums to tell his story. He can already see the journey. 'Hello Exile' was his moment where he wanted to be more of a writer. "It's a very wordy album," he comments. And 'Rented World' too, when they wanted to be a heavier rock band. "These are all stages, not just lyrically but musically, of our lives and what we were excited about," he reflects.
'Everything I Ever Saw' already goes down in his history as an album he is proud of. An album they are all proud of. It is a snapshot of everything they saw in a window of a couple of years in their mid-thirties, through the highs and lows of life.
His grandmother watched her life pass across a screen and wanted to go back. Greg is making sure he won't have to. "It feels like everything I needed to say has been said," he considers. "You only have so many albums in a career, so you've got to make them important. Sometimes I look back and think, 'I wish I'd said this, I wish I did this', but, with this record, I'm really happy."
The Menzingers' album 'Everything I Ever Saw' is out now.
