Spanish Love Songs — Schmaltz: A Long Overdue and Purposefully Personal Review
If you’re looking for music to spiral out to, but don’t want heartbreak country, don’t want a stark black metal album that rips at your aches and pains with wretches and tremolos, don’t want to get lost in a wall of ambient sound, or whatever other possibilities you may choose; if you are looking to scratch that itch that, sometimes, only hyper-angst-ridden, emotional, punk can accomplish, do not miss out on this album!
Spanish Love Songs makes relatively straightforward punk music with an emotional twist. This album isn’t anything altogether original, but it makes no claim at being incredibly high brow or revolutionary. It’s a humble album, that calls out its own pretensions, and is fun in its simplicity.
The guitar riffs are no standard three power chord motifs. They are rather unique and complex for the genre, although not overwrought. I thought it worth an afternoon to figure out the opening riff to “Sequels, Remakes, & Adaptations”, and that should tell you about the delicate balance of the musicality here. I’m a below average guitarist, so these songs aren’t the band flexing their virtuosity, but it piques my interest as much as any noodly death metal band could. Sweep picking doesn’t make a good album (cough, cough, Dragonforce).
On the song “The Boy Considers His Haircut” the lead singer offers the critique that his father has on his art, and he goes on to call his band’s own songs “shitty”. When detailing the best he can hope for in life, “to zone out in a room full of people that I [he] don’t know on a hospital bed”, he criticizes the image as “obvious”. The constant self-doubt present on this record is what makes it so endearing. There are many things on this album that could be perceived as pretentious, edgy, or cliche, but they are always presented with the perfect tinge of doubt. The doubt that creatives have about what they have created is not lost on this group.
The issues of depression, suicide, and death are dealt with on this album in a way that neither rebukes nor glorifies them. The album works in a very unique and cathartic way. It encourages the listener to “maybe be better”, but it qualifies suicidal thoughts as valid, and ultimately, at the close of the project, it is concluded that “you’ll never be better”. The album’s tone is relentlessly hopeless, but not without great touches of light humor and hope. It’s attitude reads less as punk and more as, “this is what punk has gotten me” and I can’t think of anything more punk than that. It may sound, from my description, like an album exclusively for jaded punks who have stuck with the lifestyle for too long, but this album is skeptical even of itself.
The back and forth between inspiration and lethargy in the lyrics keep Schmaltz interesting listen after listen. It is ultimately the heavy-handed but undeniably powerful lyrics, paired with some tasteful punk instrumentation, that make this album unique and a mainstay in my rotation current rotation.
I’m not the type to give numeric ratings. I’m sure you’re not the type to consider my rating meaningful(that’s good on you!), but I am the type to implore you to listen to something worthwhile. Hopefully, you’ll be the type of person to check this out, and, hopefully, it will be your type of album.
