Jim Lindberg, lead singer and songwriter for long running California skate punk band, Pennywise, has recorded an 11-song album with his side project band, The Black Pacific, titled HERE COMES OUR WAVE, that will be released on September 20th via Toronto based Dine Alone Records (The Dirty Nil, Jimmy Eat World, NOBRO).
The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Paul Miner (Touche’ Amore, Death By Stereo, H20) at his Buzzbomb Studios in Orange, CA over two sessions in the spring and fall of 2023.
The Black Pacific previously released their self-titled debut album on SideOneDummy Records in 2010, and, like this new album, all the songs were written and performed by Lindberg, and feature his longtime friend and recording partner, drummer Alan Vega.
“I’ve been writing songs for Pennywise and various projects for many years, and I’ve amassed a catalog of hundreds of demos, literally boxes of cassette tapes from the last few decades," says Lindberg. "Some of the songs weren’t right for Pennywise, and I worked on them with Alan from The Black Pacific so it just made sense to put out under that name. I think the knee jerk reaction will be to say it all sounds like Pennywise, but I wrote the music and lyrics for more than half of every Pennywise album we made together after Jason our bass player passed away, so I think it’s more accurate to say that Pennywise sounds like me, not the other way around! When I pick up an electric guitar this is the music that comes out of me, regardless of what name it comes out under.”
The album kicks off with the hyper-kinetic opening track and lead-off single, “I Think I’m Paranoid.” Lindberg says of the track, “I’ve had this song for a while now and it was about all the senseless violence, terrorism, government conspiracies and divisiveness that make you want to move to a desert island somewhere, but now I’ve updated it to include hate groups, militias and global pandemics, so it’s basically just a panic attack with distorted guitars at 120 Beats Per Minute.”
The rest of the album doesn’t let up from there with tracks like “No Fun” about sociopath dictators around the world inflicting chaos and death on innocent civilians, and the relentlessly pounding “Here We Come” about the encroaching threat of A.I. taking all our jobs and eventually replacing us completely. The lyrics on this album are extremely timely and reflect the millennial angst that continues to build around the world. “I’ve always felt the need to purge my frustration with our self-defeating tendency to want to destroy ourselves and the planet in a never-ending quest for power, dominance and greed, and that message is more urgent than ever so I didn’t want to wait any longer to put these songs out,” explains Lindberg.
But there are several tracks that are about the resignation that maybe the dreams of acceptance and escape are the only things that help keep hope alive. “Float Away” is a rare love song from Lindberg about wanting to build a raft so he and his wife can float away to “Canada or Timbuktu” – and in “I Won’t Let You Down” he wistfully tells her “Somehow we’ve made it through it all” and now they enjoy the sunsets waiting for “the flash of green, shining through the gold.” The closing title track is Lindberg’s ‘love song to a wave.” A lifelong surfer and member by proxy of Taylor Steele’s Momentum Generation, it’s hard not to hear that Lindberg finds his escape from all the carnage in the world by sharing the ocean waves and spending time with his friends and family.
The long awaited follow up to their first album, HERE COMES OUR WAVE is a powerful, thought provoking album from the Black Pacific that is at the same time resigned to our fate as a highly flawed planet, but hopeful that the bonds of love and respect for nature can hopefully guide us through stormiest of seas.