If you are an L.A.-area musician who would like to submit unreleased songs or videos of any genre for premiere, email a stream or download link to fortherecord@larecord.com.

Vinny Earley’s Vaguess put out their vicious Guilt Ring full-length in 2017—our review here—but now they’ve got a new record that’s more a slow burn than a scorcher. You get it—it’s the kind of thing you look away from for a second and suddenly the whole place is on fire. Opener “Some Kinda Meaningful” is made from a little of the Mekons’ bummer anthem “Where Were You” and a little Gun Club guitar, plus a world-weary quit-the-bullshit attitude that’d be right at home next to the early Replacements. It’s a fitting start for the new Have A Good Summer album, a mostly-solo production by Earley (with drums by Miles Luttrell of Useless Eaters) that plugs right into a long tradition of proudly iconoclastic rock ‘n’ roll—bands like the Dicks, the Dils or the Dream Syndicate, who used punk less as an pre-set sound and more as way to say everything they needed to say. (People who miss the Starvations should get into this, too, because Vaguess have that same hills-on-fire-above-the-city vibe.) This DIY video is a perfectly unrehearsed complement to a song about the power of nothing, starring a guy (Earley, of course) who does unto others as he’d have them do unto him, which works pretty well until the other guys are done with him. Turns out that sometimes “fun while it lasted!” is as good as it gets! Says Earley:

“‘Some Kinda Meaningful’ is a half-assed nihilist’s take on people trying to derive deep meaning from things that mean nothing—the death of some random celebrity whom they’ve never met or cared about while they were alive, or people who post a long-winded internet monologue everyday about how important and significant the day before was to their life. If everything is meaningful, then nothing is meaningful. The video has nothing to do with any of that. [Director[ Zach Miller [of Wild Wing] and I just wanted to do a fish-out-of water type of thing about a cowboy who winds up in the big city to be a star, but gets mixed up with the wrong crowd [Theo Cohn of Wild Wing and and Katlo of Safe Word and Escorts] and becomes part of their gang. Part of it is a joke about me moving to L.A. from Orange County. Zach shot it all on an iPhone 6. Many Bird scooters were harmed in the making of this video.”

Vaguess plays a release show for Have A Good Summer tonight at the Factory DTLA with Traps PS, Wild Wing and Liposuction, and they’ll be in Europe next month. Get the record here or stream it here, and check the full tour dates below!

EU tour:
5/9 Antwerp, BE
5/10 Utrecht, NL
5/11 Cologne, DE
5/12 TBD
5/13 Berlin, DE
5/14 Leipzig, DE
5/15 Prague, CZ
5/16 Brn, CZ
5/17 TBD
5/18 Altötting, DE
5/19 TBD
5/20 TBD
5/21 Paris, FR