First LP in Nearly 14 Years, ‘HERE COMES OUR WAVE,’ Out On September 20th Via Dine Alone Records

Jim Lindberg, lead singer and songwriter for long-running California skate punk band, Pennywise, has recorded an 11-song album with his side project band, The Black Pacific, titled HERE COMES OUR WAVE, that will be released on Toronto-based Dine Alone Records (The Dirty Nil, Jimmy Eat World, NOBRO). The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Paul Miner (Touche’ Amore, Death By Stereo, H20) at his Buzzbomb Studios in Orange, CA over two sessions in the spring and fall of 2023. The Black Pacific previously released their self-titled debut album on SideOneDummy Records in 2010, and, like this new album, all the songs were written and performed by Lindberg, and feature his longtime friend and recording partner, drummer Alan Vega.

The album kicks off with the hyper-kinetic opening track and lead-off single, “I Think I’m Paranoid.” Lindberg says of the track, “I’ve had this song for a while now and it was about all the senseless violence, terrorism, government conspiracies and divisiveness that make you want to move to a desert island somewhere, but now I’ve updated it to include hate groups, militias, and global pandemics, so it’s basically just a panic attack with distorted guitars at 120 Beats Per Minute.”

The rest of the album doesn’t let up from there with tracks like “No Fun” about sociopath dictators around the world inflicting chaos and death on innocent civilians, and the relentlessly pounding “Here We Come” about the encroaching threat of A.I. taking all our jobs and eventually replacing us completely. The lyrics on this album are extremely timely and reflect the millennial angst that continues to build around the world. He explains, “I’ve always felt the need to purge my frustration with our self-defeating tendency to want to destroy ourselves and the planet in a never-ending quest for power, dominance, and greed, and that message is more urgent than ever so I didn’t want to wait any longer to put these songs out.”

But several tracks are about the resignation that maybe the dreams of acceptance and escape are the only things that help keep hope alive. “Float Away” is a rare love song from Lindberg about wanting to build a raft so he and his wife can float away to “Canada or Timbuktu” – and in “I won’t Let You Down” he wistfully tells her “Somehow we’ve made it through it all” and now they enjoy the sunsets waiting for “the flash of green, shining through the gold.” The closing title track is Lindberg’s ‘love song to a wave.” A lifelong surfer and member by proxy of Taylor Steele’s Momentum Generation, it’s hard not to hear that Lindberg finds his escape from all the carnage in the world by sharing the ocean waves and spending time with his friends and family.

The long-awaited follow-up to their first album, Here Comes Our Wave is a powerful, thought-provoking album from the Black Pacific that is at the same time resigned to our fate as a highly flawed planet, but hopeful that the bonds of love and respect for nature can hopefully guide us through stormiest of seas.