Boys Life are finally putting out new songs after being quiet for almost three decades.
The group, who first got together in 1993, is dropping a fresh EP called Ordinary Wars on November 21, thanks to Spartan, and the first single, “Ordinary War,” even has its own video you can watch. After their music was reissued last year, the band decided to reunite and write again, which is pretty wild considering how long it’s been since their last original songs.
Brandon Butler shared, “I think about how short life is a lot. I think we buy into a fantasy that America, money, status, time and titles are real. Those things are really just fabrications in the framework of the American psyche. Our government has failed us. Corporate America owns every facet of our lives. We’re all glued to social media. Cheap dopamine hits scrolling by. Your ideas and feelings use to be the only thing someone couldn’t take from you and now they found a way to take those. America is a business and we all work for the company. If one were to fight a war against these fabrications, one would have to start breaking that framework and value system down. The war would be inside each of us. Denying those forces trying to buy our minds and time. We are a part of something much bigger. So it’s not an ordinary war.”
Back in the day, these guys—Butler, Joe Winkle, John Rejba, and John Anderson—were mixing rough indie vibes with honest emo, and they hung out with bands like Braid and Christie Front Drive. Their first two albums came out in 1995 and 1996, and then, poof, silence for years.
Fans always hoped they’d make new music, and now it’s actually happening.
They did a few quick reunion gigs in 2015 and again in 2024, but nothing new was written until those Numero reissues got them fired up again. Suddenly, they found themselves in Weights and Measures Soundlab in Kansas City, recording with Duane Trower, and now we’re getting Ordinary Wars. Sometimes, the world really does feel upside-down.
