AJJ explore grief and what comes next with new album 'Disposable Everything'

When viewed together, the last two album titles from AJJ tell a very distinct story.

January 2020's "Good Luck Everybody" was a highly prophetic offering given that it came out eight or so weeks before COVID lockdowns.

"I do want to go on record that we did not engineer COVID as a marketing stunt for 'Good Luck Everybody,'" says cellist Mark Glick.

Building on this "story," the band's forthcoming album, "Disposable Everything" (due out May 26), captures the vast trauma and psychic turmoil our species has undergone in the three years since.

The band, which was formed in Phoenix in 2004, celebrate the release of the album with a free show at Zia Records in Tempe at 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 6.

"You can never be done with that," says frontman Sean Bonnette of COVID-related fallout. "There's gonna be echoes of that, like when you drop a rock into a pond, for a very, very long time to come."

But the 14-track effort is so much more than just another COVID-era record. It is, in many ways, about trying to get back to normal and finding the silver lining when you're left wading through the aftermath.

"I think there are so many variables to creation that everything informs, but nothing I can think of that subjectively makes anything easier or harder," Bonnette says of the subject matter and working post-COVID. "People are still going to continue to use art to process trauma and to speak to one another on subconscious levels to greater themes that we're not even fully conscious of. I think in that way, it's kind of the same as it ever was."

If nothing else, then, this record was highlighted by an increasingly novel experience for AJJ.

"We were able to get the band together," says bassist Ben Gallaty of recording. "We'd done a little bit of touring beforehand, but it still seemed early and everything was super weird as far as being together with other humans in a room."

He adds, "Sometimes we'd make records where we were all there together in the room. Sometimes we'd do some basic tracking and build on that. But we tried to be really conscious that we're going to make this whole record together in the room. It was cool to actually and intentionally make that the process. There was certainly some excitement and [saying], 'Hell yeah. We're doing it; we're playing together.'"

While some bands take that an as advantage, AJJ lead very different lives, and getting the chance to come together felt like a powerful moment in a time of true uncertainty.

"There's all these moments in our band's career where we had to figure out how to make a creative thing work with people living in different places," Gallaty says, with bandmates often living in several cities simultaneously. "We haven't had the opportunity to just do weekly rehearsals where the whole band gets together. That hasn't happened maybe since we started doing a more full band with drums and keys and everything. And this is like the culmination of all that experience, making this record."

Adds Bonnette, "It's a challenge for sure. Being in a band is 85 percent logistics, 10 percent waiting, and 5 percent playing. It definitely informs the way we write. And this time it was pretty fun."

That sense of camaraderie feeds into the hopeful (or at least less deliberately cynical) themes across the record. Take, for instance, an album standout in "Dissonance."
"It came from playing around with some new equipment and preamps, and I just recorded whatever felt good for the sake of recording it rather quickly," says Bonnette. "The lyrics kind of wrote themselves by just freestyling into a microphone and then refining that a little bit more. It was wanting to get that little boost of dopamine you get when you finish something, even if it's not coming out or even if it's not that good."

Through this extended process, the band were able to uncover something truly powerful.

"The energy on the recording is really, really peppy and happy," says Bonnette. "And I think a lot of that is just the excitement of us all getting together and getting to play songs in a room together."

But like trademark AJJ, there's still something of pure substance amid all those seemingly "peppy" vibes.

"It's about having to set up a million contingencies and how hard it is to exist in the world right now," says Glick of "Dissonance," adding, it's about saying, "I think I'm doing this as long as this still happens."

So, does all of this mean that "Disposable" is ultimately a feel-good record? Perhaps not entirely.

"Maybe we're just brainwashing ourselves and it's something that periodically happens through the course of things changing," says Bonnette. "Another way to put that would be adaptation; maybe it represents a greater theme of adapting. After the calamity occurs, whoever's left takes a look around and just keeps going. Is it good or bad? Probably good."

It's a sentiment echoed by guitarist/keyboardist Preston Bryant.

"James Baldwin, he talked about this idea of 'Are you an optimist, or are you a pessimist?'" he says. "And there are a lot of things to be pessimistic about. I have to be an optimist 'cause I'm alive."

It's also a deeply personal record, at least for Bonnette, as he further explores the complex grief around the death of his mother.

"As far as my relationship to the record, it's one of constant postmortem," he says. "But my mom was definitely on my mind, and I'd like to imagine [she was] guiding the process a little bit. Just thinking about what choices she would make and what choices she would like. 'Cause she was also a musician; she was really into prog rock."

And in honor of some of her faves, Bonnette says there are some "fun, goofy prog rock moments on 'Moon Valley High,' which was the high school she went to."
At the same time, though, Bonnette recognizes that in the world we live in now, things tend to be fleeting, and that can include one's emotional state. That perhaps highlights something important not only about the last few years but elevates this record further as a kind of living artifact.

"I haven't listened to the full record in a while, but every time I have since we called it finished, it's been a different thing to me," says Bonnette. "I don't think I was fully cognizant of what we were creating as a band or what the songs were about. I don't know if I will be, and what you read in the press release is kind of a snapshot of where I was then."

If there's one area where the band's perhaps struggled the most as artists, it's their relationship with touring. After years of gigging constantly behind various records, the band says COVID forced some important conversations about how they operate as a unit.

"It's all the stress of planning a tour, but then just like doing it on repeat over and over again," Gallaty says of having rescheduled tour dates in recent years. "But not actually getting the payoff of going on the road and playing the music and earning some money."

He adds, "It was really a difficult time to have peace in your head because you put all this effort into making plans and then you’re just sitting at home and making the call of, ‘Okay, we're not going do this.' Like, when do you make that call? It was a bummer, and it’s still kind of hard, but it's gotten a little better. We actually have done some touring now at this point."

Gallaty further explained that even as they've toured behind this latest LP, the entire process has left an irreversible mark.

"I used to generally go out and hang out during the show," he says. "I just feel less inclined to be hanging out; it's kind of leftover anxiety and nerves relating to being in packed rooms full of people."

Other band members noted that there are other, especially vital lessons learned amid this entire ordeal.

"Something I've noticed over the last couple years is that with the touring we are able to do, everybody took it for granted," says Glick. "So COVID was a big reset button. Like, even the grittiest of sound guys is stoked to be back at a club working. So playing shows is more fun. Crowds seem more excited. 'Cause we all know this could just go away at any second. And it did, and it sucked."
Bryant echoed similar levels of cautious optimism about touring, noting that COVID was a profound moment of clarity for many working artists.

"When COVID happened, some bands said, 'I don't want to do this anymore,'" he says. "And we were like, 'This is definitely what [we] should be doing.' So hopefully that continues. The first time we went out, a bunch of shows got canceled. And sleeping in hotels in the middle of the country, it’s not fun stuff. But musically, and with this record, it’s like, 'All systems go.'"

In true AJJ fashion, Bonnette was quick to add at least one element of touring that remains unaffected by these conversations, adding, "Everybody gets their own bed."

In all of this talk about overcoming grief and finding a new path forward, it almost seems like AJJ may be a teensy bit prophetic — even bordering on minor doomsaying. Or, that everyone else has finally caught up with them in regards to navigating an ugly world with at least some sanity.

"A broken clock is right twice a day," says Gallaty.

Adds Bonnette, "I want to call it a happy accident; that's a funny thing to call it. I think it's just run-of-the-mill pessimism."

But if the album and the current state of AJJ teach us nothing else, maybe it's that you can't change anything about the world. But at least you can celebrate when something, anything, finally goes right.

"It feels like you can kind of predict the future over the last few years," says Glick. "But I just want to bring up that we're having this conversation [on Tuesday, April 4] while Donald Trump is getting arraigned for 34 [felony] counts. So maybe the pessimism is going to lift a little bit."

AJJ. 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, May 6. Zia Records, 3201 South Mill Avenue. Tempe. Free. Call 480-829-1967 or visit ziarecords.com.