We Should Have Been DJs’ latest album leans on community to fight through despair

“Find Something New To Miss” is a darkly scintillating effort from the punk trio.

In early June, We Should Have Been DJs opened a Cloud Nothings show at the High Noon Saloon. Throughout the Madison punk band’s high-energy set, the band’s members—guitarist/vocalist Mike Pellino, bassist/vocalist Drew Ferguson, and drummer Erik Fredine—half-joked and half-apologized for the amount of time it’s taken them to release their new album, Find Something New To Miss. The album arrives 10 years after the band’s initial release, DEMO TAO, lending Find Something New To Miss an implicitly celebratory feel.

The quartet-turned-trio (former guitarist/vocalist Alex Mitchard fully exited the band in early 2022) had been promising the album would be “done and out soon” for several years, but finally delivered on that promise on June 28. Find Something New To Miss‘ release ends a five-year drought of studio material for We Should Have Been DJs. It’s the band’s first effort since the superb Side A, which was released in 2019. And the wait was worth it: Find Something New To Miss presents the scrappy project in rare form.

In the first few seconds of album opener “How I’m Gonna Die,” Pellino sings “There is no future here / For me or for the world.” It stands out as a venomously nihilistic thesis statement. Pellino’s vocal delivery is pointedly weary, communicating a severe level of exhaustion and exasperation in the face of the world’s many, many problems. 

We Should Have Been DJs strike a balance, as always, with music that’s anything but weary. The guitar work is dizzyingly scintillating, the vocals exude urgency, and the formidable rhythm work is punchy as hell. For all of Find Something New To Miss‘ blisteringly contagious energy, the lyrics are persistently dour. The album’s closing lyrics drive this home with emphasis at the end of the sprawling “Celebrate“: “All packed up / Nowhere to go / No family / A sinking pulse / Why’s it so / So hard to know / Anyone anymore.” They’re a bleak bookend that become a sensible pairing to Find Something New To Miss‘ first lines.

Strangely, the finale comes across as both a rousing call to action and as an acceptance of defeat. A group chorus of members from other Madison bands sings these lines, making the album’s final minutes reverberate with a sense of cathartic community. (The band also used this tactic on Side A‘s “Glow.”) Members of Friendly Spectres, Bashford, Gods In The Chrysalis, and many more Madison-based alt-folk, punk, and metal acts lend their vocals across the album. Their presence helps temper the dyed-in-the-wool pessimism of Pellino’s lyrics; life’s travails aren’t quite as exhausting with the support of good friends. Chicago-turned-Madison poet extraordinaire and live-show fixture Thax Douglas even makes an appearance at the end of the title track to read a short piece: “The emptiness of granted wishes / Is only temporary / Like a wedding ring giving the finger / It will be your job to clear the afterimages / From that long sharp fingernail / Night after night.”

We Should Have Been DJs’ penchant for wearing their proverbial heart on their sleeve isn’t just confined to their clear love for their contemporaries. It also comes through in how caringly they incorporate their influences. There are a few songs on Find Something New To Miss that bring notable tracks from those influences to mind. The opening of “Hometown” mirrors the palm-muted rhythmic cadence of Jeff Rosenstock’s “I’m Serious I’m Sorry.” “Diary” has a main guitar figure that’s a funhouse mirror of Ovlov’s “Where’s My Dini?.” The opening measures of the guitar work in “Cliffs” lightly echoes Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979.”

Additional moments across the album recall other Madison-based projects, too. “Other Lives” shares much in common with the shifting, riff-happy full-sprint dynamic favored by Dear Mr. Watterson, and the skyscraper riffing embedded into “Celebrate” shares a kinship with Interlay’s early work. There’s a healthy amount of connective tissue here, and it points to We Should Have Been DJs’ abundance of heart. A genuine resilience buoys Find Something New To Miss, which showcases the band’s unwavering tenacity and the various support structures (friends and contemporaries, like-minded influence points, etc.) that have kept the band intact.

Outside of Pellino’s lyrics, frantic vocals, and tastefully high-energy guitar work—all of which register as the best of his career—Ferguson and Fredine also do some genuine damage. Both musicians operate exceptionally well in tandem, often lending the album a feeling of pressing stakes. The tension they create highlights the nightmarish scenarios at play in the lyrics. This is especially true on the brooding, stormy “Daisy J,” which makes excellent use of minimal, tom-heavy work and a bassline that manages to be both busy and menacing. When the track falls into a reprieve, the rhythm section still provides a low-end bed that underscores tension—the calm between torrential outpourings of natural brutality. On “3 7 6,” Ferguson’s bassline pushes the pace. Fredine’s drums carry the bulk of the track’s white-knuckle tendencies, giving it an emphatic punch during a snare-heavy section in the chorus.

Find Something New To Miss is a tightly constructed and technically proficient album that stands a good chance to become We Should Have Been DJs’ defining work. “Space Base” opens with the lines “A long time come and gone / Forgot what we’re about / We watched the fire burn out / There’s nothing left but coal.” But even after a five-year drought of recorded material, it’s exceedingly clear that the band’s members remember what they’re about.