Watch Timeshares—or Four Puppets Dressed as Timeshares—in Their Video for "The Bad Parts"

Whenever a band puts out a record that differentiates slightly from the trajectory we—fans, the music press, etc.—imagine that they’ll take, the focus is always on a “new direction.” For Timeshares, however, the new direction that they’ve taken on their new record Already Dead is less due to a conscious decision to distance themselves from punk, and owes more to the fact that they simply became better songwriters.

Since putting out their first record Bearable way back in 2011, the band has steadily toured and fine-tuned their sound while working on their follow-up, Already Dead, for the better part of four years. And whereas their debut saw the quartet—all of whom share vocal duties—taste hints of hallmark alt-country acts like Lucero, Uncle Tupelo, and the Old 97’s while heavily exploring the Long Island punk sound, their follow-up is hands-down the best southern-tinged punk record to come out since Attack In Black’s Marriage, with lyrics on songs like “The Bad Parts” finding the silver lining in life holding you down and taking a giant dump on your head.

We spoke with guitarist and vocalist Jonathan “Fatman” Hernandez about the new record, living in Philly, and his love of early twentieth century feminist literary icons.

We’re also pleased to premiere the video for “The Bad Parts,” in which you can watch the band watch puppet versions of themselves play the song and then burst into flames. It’s an apt metaphor for punk rock, and hell, probably America at this point.

Noisey: You guys have been working on this record for a long time. I remember buying an Already Dead shirt at Stay Sweet Fest in like, 2013?
Jonathan Hernandez: Yeah, back when we did that shirt, we were like, "Cool, in like, a couple of months, we'll announce the record and everyone will know what that shirt meant!" And we hadn't even started tracking it yet at that point. We had a dry-erase board where we decided the name to be Already Dead, and we were like, “Alright, we can't change it now.”

Well, at least you got the name out of the way.
Well, with Bearable, we decided it would be a called that a year in advance, and then argued for three months about it before we decided to stick with Bearable. [Laughs]

What’s the road been like, creatively, for the past four years?
Well, before Bearable came out, we were just writing and touring, and just writing and writing for Bearable, and after it came out we had this big gap where we didn't write a new song in like over a year. The first song that we wrote for this one was "The Bad Parts", and when we finished writing it, we were like, "OK, this is a little different, is this still cool?" Because it wasn't really in tune with what was going on with Bearable, which was very much a love letter to the punk rock stuff we grew up on and loved, and doing it on our own terms. And with all of the time in between the records, we became a lot more comfortable with our influences and you get a wider scope with this one. And that's what makes it as different a record as it is…we get further into that stuff that we tasted on Bearable.

How did signing to SideOneDummy happen?
SideOneDummy came out of nowhere. We've always been bad at the whole sending demos around thing and being like, "Can you help us?" It just felt weird. We sent demos around and we got some responses, and then we sent the second batch of demos around and got some lukewarm responses, so we went, "Fuck it, let's just go make the record.” And then later, we found out that our friends had sent it to Jamie at SideOneDummy and we hung out with her and some SideOne crew at Fest and drank a lot, and part of us thinks it was the ability to drink anything they threw at us that got us the deal. [Laughs] Like to this day, I'm like, "What if I was like, I'm tired, I'm going to bed. Would the record be coming out on SideOne?" But really, we never even dreamed that this record would be coming out on this label.

I know after Bearable, a few of you moved to Philly. Has that changed the dynamic of the band at all?
Most of Already Dead was written after we moved. The thing about that is that we always lived kind of far from each other—me and [Mike] Natoli lived in Rockland County, Jay lived in Brooklyn, and Eric lived on Long Island. So the distance is more of a pain in the ass now but not too much more. I think there's the same level of collaboration on this record—Jay wrote one song, but on the nine others, Jay's guitar playing is what that part is.

How has moving to Philly treated you guys as a band?
We feel like we're a band from New York, but even when we all lived there, we always felt like Philly was the hometown show. It became this thing, even before we moved here, people were always so nice to us here and we made so many friends. New York can be a real disjointed place. Every once in a while, a venue will pop up and tie it all together, it was 538 [Johnson] and now it's Suburbia, but it's such a wild place. It doesn't always feel like there's a unified scene there, but The Reveling and Chumped are killing it now, but Philly always felt like home to us.

In addition to the changes in sound, it seems like there's a lot more fleshed out songwriting going on in this one that has a literary feel to it.
Well, even on Bearable, there's a song where the first two-thirds are a direct reference to The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. And on this one, there's a part on “The New Incisions" that paraphrases some of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. So it's always kind of been a thing for me to try to keep words flowing through my head, and I always dug lyrics that'll reference something in a sort of way. And I think there's a confidence on this one that wasn't there in Bearable, because that was the first time I had written and sung something for a band since high school, and that was the first time Mike had ever done it. And I think that time and experience gives you ammo to get more ambitious.

Was it a conscious decision to go into a different direction on this one? Because Bearable was a pretty political record, and this one seems a lot more personal.
Yeah, I think a lot of the bite thematically comes from what's going on for us personally. With Bearable, all four of us had bad shit going on in our lives. And on this one, it's all four of us in different stages dealing with all of that. And it doesn't come from a place of anger so much as actively attempting to make things better for yourself, rather than being like, "Oh, fuck". [Laughs] We still feel like we wrote a punk record, just a different kind. We didn't reinvent the wheel here. Some people are like, "What's with this new direction?” And I'm like, "It's not OK Computer, man."

Already Dead (SideOneDummy) drops on April 28, and you can pre-order it here. The band is also going to Europe in May, playing dates with Astpai and Broadcaster, among others.

Timeshares headlining tour:
Fri 1 May - Meerhout, BEL - Groezrock
Sat 2 May - Meerhout, BEL - Groezrock
Sun 3 May - Brighton, UK - TBA
Mon 4 May - Kingston, UK - The Cricketers
Tues 5 May - Norwich, UK - The Owl Sanctuary
Weds 5 May - Birmingham, UK - Scruffy Murphys
Thurs 7 May - Leeds, UK - Santiago Bar
Fri 8 May - Bristol, UK - Deadpunk Special @ The Exchange & Stag and Hounds
Sat 9 May - Bristol, UK - Deadpunk Special @ The Exchange & Stag and Hounds
Sun 10 May - Cardiff, UK - Undertone
Mon 11 May - London, UK - The Urban Bar Whitechapel
Fri 15 May - Olgiate Molgora, IT - Zenos Pub
Sat 16 May - Castiglione della Stiviere, IT - Arcidallo
Sun 17 May - Vicenza, IT - Secret Show With ASTPAI:
Mon 18 May - Wien, AT - Das Bach Tues 19 May - Graz, AT - Sub
Thurs 21 May - Nürnberg, GER - K4 *
Fri 22 May - Wiesbaden, GER - Hectic Fest #5 *
Sat 23 May - Trier, GER - SDIYG Fest Vol. 2 *
Sun 24 May - Köln, GER - AZ
Tues 26 May - Hannover, GER - TBA
Weds 27 May - Hamburg, GER - Molotov
Thurs 28 May - Copenhagen, DK - Underwerket
Fri 29 May - Berlin, GER - Cassipeia*
Sat 30 May - Wolfsburg, GER - JuHa Ost* * = with Resolutions
~ = with Broadcaster