Of Future Nausea, Spanish Love Songs’ Dylan Slocum has said “I just wanted to make a big rock record, whatever our version of […] Born In The USA would feel like.” …well, duh, obviously. Anyone who’s been paying even the slightest bit of attention to Spanish Love Songs could’ve seen this coming. The way the pieces have been falling into place hasn’t been particularly subtle, between strangled cries amid America’s societal downfall and the glossier rock tones that defined No Joy. It’s just been fully crystallised now.
And while the seemingly wholesale tabling of punk and emo for heartland-rock might seem disappointing to some (particularly those for whom Brave Faces Everyone resonated so deeply), it’s not like there’s a measurable difference in effect. The parallels drawn to specifically Born In The USA carry a lot. On that album, Bruce Springsteen sung about blue-collar boys betrayed by a government that promised an ‘American Dream’, only to return from the Vietnam War unemployed, broken and full of regret. On Future Nausea, those same boys might as well be its muse, only now cajoled by manosphere charlatans and ICE recruitment campaigns, the same betrayal for the digital age.
Even as the same core themes colour both Spanish Love Songs and Springsteen, though, the weariness at seeing every reality of modern existence is what builds Future Nausea as an album for 2026. Good American and Jan666 document the experience of seeing old schoolmates become radicalised, subservient to rapacious capitalists and authoritarian systems under the guise of being a ‘patriot’. Then there’s the rest—AI; nuclear war; fascists; all inescapable buzzwords that bounce around Dylan Slocum’s head, leaving him almost unable to string a cogent thought. Spanish Love Songs’ lyrical style has also had this feeling of succumbing to their overwhelming surroundings, and it’s especially true here. The quake in Slocum’s voice remains pronounced, almost amplifying a state where physical and mental health are on the decline, and simple survival is its own reward.
So far, so very Spanish Love Songs, then. Their songwriting template remains timely, while also showing off the intense vulnerability that living inside that system engenders. A perfect fit for a full heartland-rock album if there ever were one, eh? That’s another reason that Future Nausea is such a natural step—Spanish Love Songs are always, without fail, believable. When songs like Welcome To Hell and Shadowlands retract into the abyss, stitching together vignettes of poverty and interpersonal conflict, the final product is so rich and lived-in. The ex-emo impulse melds with sweeping, boundless rock music brilliantly.
It’s put together as confidently as anything they’ve ever done. The way that Spanish Love Songs inhabit this wide open sonic space is immediately easy, from the opening title track’s dancing keys and whips of crisp guitar. When the pace picks up and the sheen catches the light, you get songs like New Fears and Doom Tripping that feel as though they could go on for miles. Here’s the other half of the Born In The USA discussion, the “big rock record” that Spanish Love Songs are just as equipped to make. Additional touches of The Killers and 2000s U2 make Future Nausea sing all the more, and glimmer and gleam with the best of them.
Even so, for as effortlessly as Spanish Love Songs have retooled themselves in this form, their old, fist-clenching punk will be missed. There was a scrappiness to its determination that can’t be replicated by such a tidy palette. This isn’t a strict ‘substitute’, either, not when the drums can sometimes feel a little too gated for their own good, and a song like No Dreams unspools that hawkeyed focus. Ultimately, though, they’re features of the sound rather than any specific ‘wrongdoing’ from Spanish Love Songs. No Joy was the same in its early lifetime; the bugbears burrow a little deeper this time, but not so much they’ll never be shaken away.
Besides, the beauty of Spanish Love Songs—the unwavering commitment to honesty in the face of terminal collapse—hasn’t dulled, and most like can never be. Even among similar alt-punk, they were always a cut above, and transposing that to windswept Americana where every emotion can be felt more vibrantly is a supreme fit. The specialness still emanates nonstop, as the journey into fraught territories continues, and the resilience to stand among it is unparalleled. Great work, once again.
For fans of: Bruce Springsteen, The Killers, Sam Fender
‘Future Nausea’ by Spanish Love Songs is released on 6th November on Pure Noise Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
