The new HEELS album, Pop Songs for a Dying Planet, features 15 songs from Joshua McLane and Brennan Whalen.
“Brennan writes all the lyrics,” McLane says. “Except anytime you hear me scream on the record, I write it. When you work with someone like Brennan Whalen, why would you want anybody else to write the lyrics?”
The album, released October 22nd, is “what we’ve been since day one,” McLane says. “Life’s a fucking struggle, man. It’s like we love writing upbeat, fast, very poppy, catchy songs. But once you break down the lyrics, they’re usually pretty sad.”
“This one feels a little more frantic,” Whalen says. “I guess I feel like the overall sound of the record is kind of reflective of where my mind was and where Josh’s mind was when we were writing. Just individually shaken up by the last few years. We both had really bad years. We both had stuff in our families. There was a lot of loss.”
But there also was joy. McLane’s wife Cara gave birth to their son Gideon, who just turned 2.
The album includes “old songs we wanted to give a fair shake to” and “brand-new ones,” McLane says.
“Dread,” one of the new songs, is “trying to face tragedy with a sense of optimism about the future,” Whalen says. “But that’s against the backdrop of kind of wishing for the end of the world.”
“Last Man” is “maybe the heaviest song,” McLane says. “That song was the key to the whole record. When we pieced it together, it was kind of missing something. Brennan said, ‘Hey, check out this song I just pulled out of thin air.’ I sped it up a little bit and it turned out to be a monster.”
McLane wrote “Sad Max” “from neck to nuts. … That song is about how I spent most of my life as a junkie asshole. And plowing through life. And then I grow up.”
As for “Wolf,” McLane says, “Brennan ends the record with a hopefulness we’ve never done before. It’s literally screaming, ‘Let me die.’”
McLane plays his son’s toy piano on “Giddy.” He thought, “What if we put this at the very end? A bookend? Maybe there’s some hope in the future. Which is something we usually don’t do.”
“I didn’t have any hope for the fucking future. I guess I didn’t have anything vested in it. Now, I have to work for it. It sucks. I would love to be just a bump on a log.
“For me, it opens up, for lack of a better word, stylized memories. Like it’s a wonderful kind of a vision where everything is perfect. For some reason, I associate things like the Muppet Babies. Like perfection of childhood that I probably never had much of.”
They say they’re halfway done writing their next record. They usually say the next album is going to be a “big departure” and “super weird,” but, McLane says, “It ends up being more pop songs for a dying planet.”
Whalen sees his writing style changing. “I think I’ve been a little more loose with my writing,” he says. “Kind of leaning a little more into punk and garage rock.”
Previously, he says, “I tried to focus more on narrative lyrics and leaning more into a kind of a folk songwriting style. That translated over to the sound that we have. But, lately, I’ve been leaning more into more aggressive, more enthusiastic music.”
Why? “Need it more. I think everybody needs more fun. The past decade has been a huge drag. So, I don’t like being a part of making anybody sad, even though I do. I don’t mean to.”
Describing Pop Songs for a Dying Planet, McLane says, “This is a playlist for the end of the world kind of thing. Meaning, a bunch of these songs are really sweet pop songs to distract you from everything going to shit. Once you actually figure out the lyrics, it’s about how everything is going to shit. You don’t notice that at first.”
Pop Songs for a Dying Planet can be heard on all musical platforms. The record release party for the album will be at 8 p.m. October 29th at Hi Tone at 282-284 North Cleveland Street. Mo Alexander will open.