21 Songs That Helped Shape Sad Park’s New LP “It’s All Over”

The West Coast punks’ latest record dropped last week via Lauren Records.
Playlist
21 Songs That Helped Shape Sad Park’s New LP “It’s All Over”

The West Coast punks’ latest record dropped last week via Lauren Records.

Words: Mike LeSuer

photo by Robert Nuñez

September 28, 2021

The 13 tracks on Sad Parks’ new album It’s All Over may sound breezy, but that doesn’t mean the process from conception to completion of the record was. Between the songs’ subjects reflecting familiar late-twenties hardships—ranging from strained relationships to your back kind of hurting sometimes to the newly ubiquitous vague declaration of “I don’t wanna be around” uttered on the track’s infectious single “Nothing Ever”—and the way they’re addressed in a sonic language that’s way too much fun, the Cali group’s sophomore album fits firmly in the canon of releases established by groups like Jeff Rosenstock, PUP, Prince Daddy & the Hyena, and early Surf Curse.

With the record out last Friday, there seems to be some sense of relief from the band after putting these long-in-the-works tracks out into the world—making the task of compiling a list of songs they didn’t write but which inspired the record all the much easier. “This playlist was the soundtrack to our several-year-long endeavor of writing and recording this album,” the band shares. “With extremely hot days writing in a garage with no AC to long nights at a studio keeping each other up with blaring music. These are the songs that helped shape this record and kept us moving.”

With PUP, Prince Daddy, and Rosenstock’s Bomb the Music Industry! and Antarctigo Vespucci all accounted for, hear their picks below, and check out the record here.