On Any Given Day

On any given day I’m likely to be listening to a song from Brave Faces Everyone, the third album from Spanish Love Songs. This is a forty-minute maelstrom of personal loss, generational angst, and flickering hope. Take a breath and then jump in.

The stall is set out from the start with the one-two punch of “Routine Pain” and “Self-Destruction (As a Sensible Career Choice)”. “Routine Pain” is not so much a lament as it is the album’s mission statement: heartbreak and pain are routine, daily, dependable as the weather. “On any given day,” the band promises us, they’re “out to break your heart.” There’s no time to think about this because “Self-Destruction” hits you immediately with a statement that is born out of hope but eroded by reality: “It won’t be this bleak forever.” A platitude that people tell you at your lowest ebb but containing a grain of truth that is enough for an optimist to cling to.

“Kick” is the singalong song about the thing that no one writes singalongs about: watching an addict friend’s life fall apart but not being able to do anything to help. “What’s another ten grand gonna fix in the end?” This is the blackest of black humour, wickedly painful and yet, somehow, you can’t help but sing the chorus at the top of your lungs. Played live, this is the song Spanish Love Songs often dedicates to the supporting bands. Make of that what you will.

Then the losers. “Losers” is anthemic, the angst of a generation set out plainly enough that it should flatten you. Except it does the opposite: your fist goes up in the air and you scream out the chorus. There’s nothing more cathartic than being in the mosh pit with hundreds of other people doing the same. “Losers 2” turns the telescope around, a tale of personal suffering amidst the perceived slow-motion collapse of a society. And yet, maybe it’s not about personal suffering. Maybe it’s someone standing up to the voices that shout that “there’s nowhere we go from here.”

Which brings us to the conclusion that everything feels like it has been building towards. “Brave Faces, Everyone” (the album title, but now with a comma) is an instruction to the listener (and, when played live, the audience) to brace for impact. It collects the threads from the previous nine songs, weaving them together into the barnstorming finale. Literally in the case of the bridge to the final chorus, which includes the echoes of everything that has come before it. The music swells to its apex and then the storm breaks: “We were never broken, life’s just very long. Brave faces, everyone.”

And that’s why we come back. The shift from personal to collective, “we were never broken,” not “I was never broken.” That everyone listening and everyone in the room is wearing the same brave face. Take a breath. Play it again. And again.

You can’t talk about Brave Faces Everyone without mentioning the pandemic. Released in February 2020, it never got toured or promoted in the normal way; lockdowns and travel restrictions saw to that. Listening now, there’s an almost prescient quality to the lyrics: “It gets harder, doesn’t it?” Maybe.

On any given day, I’ll be listening. And singing. Brave Faces Everyone is Taped

ø