We’ve been having a horrible time… in 2020. COVID-19 has forced us to keep our distance from one another and has caused unimaginable pain to millions around the world. Millions are out of work. Bands can’t play concerts and tour around the world like they usually do, forcing them to find new ways to get in front of their fans. The Menzingers came into 2020 with plans to tour their new album, Hello Exile, which was released last October. Instead, they canceled all future tour dates when everything shut down in March.

The Menzingers decided to flex their creative muscles and make the most of their time away from each other in quarantine. Between mid-March and June, the band re-recorded Hello Exile while they were all in different locations. Their goal was to create something like the acoustic demos that appeared on the excellent On The Possible Past, but instead they decided to add to the depths of the songs and not just strip them back.  

The last time we heard from The Menzingers, they were fretting over getting older. “Where we gonna go now that our twenties are over?” frontman Greg Barnett asked repeatedly on “Tellin’ Lies,” the opening track from 2017’s After the Party. If that album had ended with its title track, Barnett would have had his answer (and the band could have feasibly had their happy ending). “After the party, it’s me and you.” The record proved to be a growing-up narrative that culminated in a love story—or so it seemed. But the last song on that record was actually “Livin’ Ain’t Easy,” where life was likened to a continental breakfast where they’re always out of coffee.

Hello Exile is essentially that line blown up into a widescreen, cinematic experience. The party is way past over, and so are your twenties. This time, youth and young adulthood have been replaced by the next chapter, and it’s one where things don’t seem quite as black and white as they used to. “How do I steer my early 30s?/Before I shipwreck, before I’m 40?/ Ain’t it a shame what we choose to ignore/What kind of monsters did our parents vote for?” Those are some of the first lines that Barnett sings on “America (You’re Freaking Me Out),” Hello Exile’s disillusioned opening track. A lot of this record is about trying to pretend that you’re younger than you are, or trying to get back to those golden days of youth—back when you had no cares or responsibilities. Right off the bat, though, “America” tips the record’s hand, because how can you get back to that place of innocence when the whole nation seems to be going to hell? Later, on the terrific “Strain Your Memory,” Barnett pines after a girl with a simple proposition: “Can you strain your memory back to the times/When trouble wasn’t always on our minds?” It’s a nice thought, but it’s not always that easy.

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