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L.A. musician Geoff Geis has a long and distinguished history: Big Whup, Pizza!, the solo songs that made him something of a SoundCloud sensation and appearances in L.A. RECORD both as subject and contributor. And now that he’s “older and presumably wiser,” he says, he’s got a new outfit called Soft Sailors and this anxious/angsty art-wave track “What We Live,” which touches on Sparks, Geza X and maybe a little of Peter Ivers’ manic midnight energy. It’s a song that wrestles with the power and weight we give the past, he says:

‘What We Live’ is a song about the dread I think we all must feel at those points in our lives when we stop to think about how much our futures are constricted by our pasts and all the decisions we’ve already made. Every single opportunity we take costs us the infinite opportunities we didn’t take, thus even the most successful among us ends up with regrets. But existential angst is counterproductive —life isn’t what we want, it’s what we live.”

Geis drew from a deep well of prior collaborators to record this song, deploying former Pizza! drummer Tyler Sabbag (who also produced this track), guitarist Duncan Thum and backing vocalist Alex Myrvold and recruiting Line & Circle’s John Engelhard to play bass. But he’s also put together a live version with Big Whup bassist Jenna Parker and Rumspringa drummer Andrew Parker, and that’s the band that will perform at Highland Park Bowl this Fri., June 7, with Babe Parade, the Night Owl Collective and the Order of the Diamond. More info here, and full lyrics below! (And check Soft Sailors’ Spotify for more unpredictable covers and originals.)

Though I could go in so many directions
Oh, I’ve got to pick a road
The past doesn’t exist
I am this moment of intense confusion
But lost delusions hold

You work so hard to concentrate
With all these voices
Ringing in your ear
Oh everybody heeds them sometimes
This isn’t what we wanted
Life isn’t what we want, it’s what we live