After an unconventional musical career arc over the past decade—getting his start as a transient busker before pivoting to EDM—A.A. Triggs continues to turn heads with his long-in-the-works debut solo record Sounds to Salve the Scarred and Scornful, which promises sixteen tracks of surf-folk fusion. While the surf influence is muted on the album’s folk-ballad debut single, there’s plenty of punk energy to make up for it.
“Today we’ll burn down the banks / Maybe I’ll find my love,” Triggs sings in a Stephin Merritt baritone (over an electrified version of Guthrie’s fascist-smashing guitar) on “A Love Song for the Revolution”—which is just that. The slow-burn anarchist tune is teeming with both vengeance and love, dreaming up a romance while passing out gas masks.
“The song is a romantic anarchist’s fantasy I suppose,” he shares. “I wrote it about a year and a half ago when it felt like the civil unrest in the world was boiling to a head. It’s taken a long time to get the project together and the lyrics have just become more fitting as time went on. I wanted to write a sweet-sounding tune about something serious. I’ve heard lots of songs in that vein within punk, but I wanted to do a ballad for people that want to watch it burn.”
Hear the tune below—happy belated Valentine’s Day!
