Spanish Love Songs - Future Nausea (2026)

Spanish Love Songs have spent most of a decade writing about burnout and grief. On Brave Faces Everyone, the music was every bit as heavy as the words. It was a lot. Future Nausea is just as bleak on paper, but Dylan Slocum sounds different this time. He’s still looking right at the wreckage. He’s just stopped lying down in it.

After 2023’s No Joy, the band goes all in on heartland rock. You’d have to try pretty hard to miss the Springsteen, Tom Petty, and The Killers albums they’ve been living with. They don’t hide it, and I’m glad. Those big, warm guitars make the worries in these songs land harder, not softer. The funny part is that Slocum knows exactly what he’s doing. On “Welcome to Hell,” he takes a swipe at retro-styled marketing that sells a past nobody remembers. He does it on an album that sounds like 1985. Chris Walla and Sarah Tudzin keep the production lean so that a single synth line can take over a song. And Slocum’s voice is the same as always, just better. This kind of music suits him, and that might be the biggest reason the album works.