“What became crystal clear to me is that I have things that I can lose, and it’s going to suck when I lose them,” says Dylan. “Sometimes, it’s easy to forget about all the things you have and the things you would hate to lose. The flip side of that is, of course, that there are people who would hate to lose you.

Between these two ideas – the reluctance to look back and the desire to hold on to what you have – Spanish Love Songs cover an awful lot of ground on ‘No Joy’. From the precariousness of life on ‘Lifers’ to the notion of dying alone in ‘Pendulum’, or putting dreams on hold in ‘Clean-up Crew’, it’s an album of few laughs but unbelievable thematic depths. They’ve never sounded better, too; the raw punk edges of ‘Schmalz’ and ‘Giant Sings The Blues’ have been appropriately shorn to be replaced by a sound indebted to 80s power-pop and glitzy new-wave as it is punk rock.

In the case of ‘Clean-up Crew’ – the musical and lyrical standout – it’s easy to see Dylan’s journey in that of the protagonist. From a potential career as a baseball pitcher, via a journalism major and Hollywood scriptwriter, his route to punk rock stardom has been anything but straightforward. He jokes that he’s taken a “really dumb path,” but through a song like ‘Clean-up Crew,’ he gets to ask, ‘What if I stopped chasing all these unrealistic goals and settled for something simpler?’

Given this, it’s unsurprising to learn that compassion also plays a big part in the record – both in terms of being kind to yourself and others.

The album is bookended by the songs ‘Lifers’ and ‘Re-Emerging Signs of the Apocalypse’. The former features the line ‘Don’t write yourself out of the equation’, the latter ‘We’re all part of the equation’. Naturally, such a callback is deliberate, says Dylan. More such callbacks were planned, but Dylan jokes that “Other bands had done it better than us”. Nevertheless, such a trick plays well for someone with a literary background.

“I like to play around with words, like flipping a line or a sentence in a song on its head,” he says. “Those two in particular – like ‘Don’t write yourself out of the equation’ – it’s a nice way to remind someone that you’re important and that you play a part in this system; but then, in the last song, it’s like acknowledging I’m part of this system – and we’re all part of that same system, but it doesn’t always run correctly. It’s beautiful, and it’s terrible, and we need to remember our place in it.”

Given the layers to the songs on ‘No Joy’, there’s plenty for people to latch onto. Fans of wallowing in despair will find plenty to satiate their needs, while those who like things more optimistic will discover kernels of hope buried at the core of every song. Appropriately, Dylan’s not into telling people which is the truth, more that life is both awesome and awful in equal measure, and ‘No Joy’ reflects that dichotomy.

“’Brave Faces Everyone’ was a pretty depressing album,” he considers. “It ended up being more depressing than I intended. ‘Schmalz’ has some humour, but ‘Brave Faces…’, I can’t defend how crushing it is. On this one, the album title is meant to be a joke – or at least ironic – because it is a very joyous album, and there’s a lot of hope to be found in it.

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things,” goes the line in The Shawshank Redemption, as a way to close off the fact that the protagonist, Andy Dufresne, had to wade through literal shit to get to freedom. In some small way, this a parable on the journey of life; of appreciating the liberties and love it brings and being mindful of what you can lose if they’re taken away. Spanish Love Songs may, superficially at least, display all the hallmarks of an existential crisis set to three-minute punk songs, but hope, in some shape or form, continues to spring eternal at the core of their message. ■

Taken from the September 2023 edition of Upset. Spanish Love Songs’ album ‘No Joy’ is out 25th August.