AJJ will release Disposable Everything, their newest album and debut for Hopeless Records, on May 26, and now they share “Candles of Love,” which frontman Sean Bonnette says is “was plucked out of my personal life and thrown on stage by a dear friend. It’s about a wedding present.” The song’s offbeat romanticism offers a quintessentially AJJ-esque vision of the world.

AJJ recorded Disposable Everything last year and it marks the first time the band went into the studio as a five-piece. The end result boasts apocalyptic themes and imagery like all the best AJJ records. But 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. In fact, it’s a vital, important and beautiful album that’ll make you feel better about everything while telling you just how terrible everything is at the same time.

Ever since AJJ formed back in 2004, it’s felt like the world has been playing catch-up with the band’s cheery take on a collapsing society. Disposable Everything is about what happens after the collapse—on both an intimately personal level and a much broader scale. “A large part of this album is the terrible thing I’ve been imagining finally happened,” singer Sean Bonnette 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.” The14 tracks found on Disposable Everything truly capture the simultaneous terror and wonder of being alive. 

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. “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.”

Photo Courtesy: Kyle Dehn