Smirk is the project of Nick Vicario, a Los Angeles musician who's been making retro-filtered punk rock for quite a while now with albums like 2021's LP and 2022's Material. The current live iteration of the band features members of Hotline TNT, Poison Ruin, and Pardoner, but Vicario is Smirk's sole songwriter. Today he's announced that a new Smirk album is on the way: Speculative Fiction arrives in July, and its great lead single "Dog Years" is out now.
There's still a hardcore-informed grit to "Dog Years," but Speculative Fiction also sees Vicario steer more towards that fuzzy power-pop territory that reminds me a bit of Wipers or early Replacements. Thematically, the songs on Speculative Fiction find Vicario reminiscing on his checkered past — "I was doing horrible things and destroying my life," he says — and working through the repercussions in hindsight. He adds:
When I was writing Speculative Fiction, a lot of that dealt with the "old me" and some of the crazy life choices I made while abusing substances. So while the record is partially about the "old me," it’s also very much about putting them in my current world and the new set of problems that come from that.
There's a lot of burnout, isolation and going through the motions now with my new life. ["Dog Years"] also deals with suicidal ideation and not wanting to bother my friends, which is about self-isolation and the spiral that comes with it.
"Dog Years" is sounding sick so far, and you can listen for yourself below, where you'll also find the Speculative Ficiton tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Greetings"
02 "Victimry"
03 "Cheap Greed"
04 "Going Off To Die"
05 "Sistine Junk"
06 "Dog Years"
07 "I Shall Be Released"
08 "Perfect World"
09 "Abide"
10 "Ritual Torture"
11 "Interlude"
12 "Shit Song"
13 "Crime Pays"
Speculative Fiction is out 7/3 via Smoking Room.
