AJJ RELEASE NEW ALBUM DISPOSABLE EVERYTHING =ON TOUR NOW – SHOWS WITH THE FRONT BOTTOMS & OCEANATOR, PLUS ACOUSTIC TOUR THIS SPRING
AJJ TOUR DATES
May 26 - New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall * SOLD OUT
May 27 - Philadelphia, PA @ Creep Records^
May 28 - Long Island, NY @ Looney Tunes^
May 29 - New York, NY @ Rough Trade^
May 30 - Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom #
May 31 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall #
June 1 - Providence, RI @ Fete Music Hall #
June 3 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair #
June 4 - Woodstock, NY @ Colony #
June 6 - Harrisburg, PA @ HMAC #
June 7 - Rehoboth, DE @ Dogfish Head (AJJ Only)
June 8 - Richmond, VA @ Broadberry #
June 9 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer #
June 10 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club #
July 12 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom &
July 13 - Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room Highland Park &
July 15 - Berkeley, CA @ Cornerstone Craft Beer & Live Music &
July 17 - Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall %
July 18 - Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile %
July 19 - Boise, ID @ Treefort Music Hall %
July 22 - Denver, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre %
July 24 - Lawrence, KS @ Bottleneck %
July 25 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater %
July 26 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall %
July 27 - Indianapolis, IN @ Old National Centre %
July 28 - Lansing, MI @ Hall 224 %
July 29 - Detroit, MI @ The Shelter %
Aug 17 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall @
Aug 18 - Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop @
Aug 19 - Lexington, KY @ The Burl @
Aug 20 - Nashville, TN @ Exit/In @
Aug 21 - Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle @
Aug 22 - Charlotte, NC @ Neighborhood Theatre @
Aug 23 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle @
Aug 24 - Charleston, SC @ Music Farm @
Aug 25 - Atlanta, GA @ Hell at The Masquerade @
Aug 26 - Memphis, TN @ Growlers @
Aug 27 - St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall @
Aug 29 - Columbia, MO @ The Blue Note @
Aug 31 - Oklahoma City, OK @ Resonant Head @
Sept 1 - Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad @
* = support for The Front Bottoms
^AJJ acoustic
# = w/ Oceanator & Gladie
& w/ Open Mike Eagle
% w/ Open Mike Eagle & Foot Ox
@ w/ Open Mike Eagle, Foot Ox, Sad Park
Folk-punk legends AJJ have released their newest LP, Disposable Everything, out today via Hopeless Records. The album marks their first for the label. Disposable Everything boasts apocalyptic themes and imagery like all the best AJJ records. And while it follows the outbreak of a pandemic and AJJ’s eerily prescient January 2020 album Good Luck Everybody, the new LP is less a prophesying mirror held to a burning world than one inspired by personal grief and about what happens when you reach the other side. It’s a beautiful album that’ll make you feel better about everything while telling you just how terrible everything is at the same time.
AJJ teased the album with six critically acclaimed singles - “Disposable Everything,” “Dissonance,” “The Baby Panda,” “Death Machine,” “White Ghosts,” and “Candles of Love.” The album has garned attention from the likes of Brooklyn Vegan who ran an “Influences Feature,” Paste who gave the album a 9.2 review.
AJJ’s unparalleled live show has always been a bedrock of the band and this month has seen them on the road supporting The Front Bottoms - that tour concludes tonight with a sold-out show in New Haven, CT. Tomorrow they kick off a short run of acoustic shows that includes a stop at New York City’s Rough Trade on May 29. The following night they start their headline tour with Oceanator and Gladie as support. They will return to New York City for a show at Webster Hall on May 31 and also stop in Cambridge, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. See below to find a show near you, and get your tickets HERE. **
Ever since Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty formed AJJ back in 2004, it’s felt like the world has been playing catch-up. That’s because the band—completed these days by guitarist/keyboard player Preston Bryant, cellist Mark Glick and (relatively) new drummer Kevin Higuchi—has always woven apocalyptic themes and imagery into many of its songs and lyrics. They even self-released a record called Good Luck Everybody in January 2020, as if they knew what was coming. Now though, in 2023, with their eighth studio record and debut on Hopeless Records, Disposable Everything, it feels like the world is finally aligned with AJJ’s doom-laden prophecies - albeit one that still shimmers with hope.
For singer Sean Bonnette, the record is less a prophesizing mirror held to a burning world than one inspired by personal grief. In fact, for him, this record is about what happens after the collapse—on both an intimately personal level and a much broader scale. “A large part of Disposable Everything is the terrible thing I’ve been imagining finally happened,” he explains. “A big theme is my mom’s death, which is something I think everyone lives in terror of. But once it happens and you’re still alive, you figure out how to move on. It is, in some weird way, our happiest record.”
Anybody familiar with the band knows that juxtaposition—between apocalyptic despair and the warm comfort of an electric blanket—is nothing new for AJJ, but these 14 tracks are the most firm example of that to date. Recorded with David Jerkovich over the first half of 2022 in various studios across the Southwest, Disposable Everything truly captures the simultaneous terror and wonder of being alive. Throughout the nearly 20 years since the band’s inception, AJJ’s music has always found its way to the irreverent, optimistic pessimists of the world. For example, 2020’s “Body Terror Song” became a viral hit on TikTok, an app that no one in the band was even on at the time.
Their unparalleled live show has always been the bedrock of AJJ, with memorable tours with Joyce Manor, Against Me!, ROAR, Jeff Rosenstock, Kimya Dawson, and huge indie punk festivals, like The Fest. And it’s that live energy and sense of community and collaboration that made its mark on the recording of Disposable Everything. For the first time recording as a full five-piece, the goal was to have fun, open up a free exchange of ideas, and just be together. That overriding sense of solidarity pervades this album, exaggerated by the way the band look at it more like a mixtape than a record in the traditional sense--fully indulging AJJ’s wide musical range and their tendency to play with genre, while also defying expectations as to what songs about certain subjects should sound like. Indeed, this feels more like a band record than AJJ have ever made before. Probably because it is.
It kicks off with “Strawberry (Probably)”, an uproarious blast of fast, glorious, carefree quasi-punk that descends into a warped blur of dissonance. That that leads into a song called “Dissonance” was, Bonnette says, unintentional, but nevertheless highlights the synergy that flows through these songs. Then take “Death Machine”, for instance - the song distills the current environmental and political crises propelled by a capitalist society into one minute 53 seconds of jittery, feel-good, punk rock urgency, in only the way that AJJ can do. “The Baby Panda” - despite spitting a horrific truth about what humankind has done to the planet, is an enjoyable singalong anthem. And the title track “Disposable Everything” spells out the damaging impact of late capitalism while still shimmering with hope. There are moments of pure levity, too—in the humor of “White Ghosts”, the self-aware wordplay of “Schadenfreude” and the offbeat romanticism of “Candles of Love”. Combined, it all offers a quintessentially AJJ-esque vision of the world, which Bonnette, both jokingly and seriously, refers to as like “The Beatles on bath salts.” As the lilting “In The Valley” brings the record to an end, it defies—save for one ominous moment—the reality of the present moment, transforming its chasm of nothingness into something resplendent. It’s a powerful final statement that renders Disposable Everything anything but. Rather, it’s a vital, important and beautiful album that’ll make you feel better about everything while telling you just how terrible everything is.
Bonnette has a simple explanation for that paradox. “And maybe where some sort of hope can be is within love, because no matter how fucked the world can get, people can love each other still.” That AJJ are still able to offer up their unique brand of humor and irreverence as a solution to the world’s ills almost two decades into their career isn’t lost on them, either. “I didn’t ever expect AJJ to be what it’s become,” says Gallaty, “but I’m really happy with it. Some of my favorite people play in the band, and the whole larger community we get to be part of just blows my mind. It’s honestly hard to imagine a life without it.”
AJJ is Sean Bonnette (guitar/vox), Ben Gallaty (bass), Preston Bryant (guitar/keys), Mark Glick (cello) and Kevin Higuchi (drums).
