The pair form the core of AJJ; they bring in friends to round out songs. Their earliest recordings reflect a DIY folk-punk aesthetic mixing the intensity of Violent Femmes, the DIY aesthetic of grunge, and the blistering social commentary of the very best punk rock, together with a radical empathy all their own. Subsequent albums brought new sounds, like the Neutral Milk Hotel-influenced horns on People That Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World (the title nods to a lesser-known Vonnegut work). More recent albums further expanded the band’s sound, while retaining their distinctive voice.
More than anything, though, the band’s music always allows for the possibility, and hope, of change. In one song, “People,” Sean declares “I have faith in my fellow man / And I only hope that he has faith in me.” On a 2014 track, “Kokopelli Face Tattoo,” he describes the hard work of striving for self-improvement:
Hey dude, I hate everything you do
But I’m trying really hard to not hate you
Hating you won’t make you suck any less.
(Whether the speaker is addressing someone else, or simply himself in the mirror, is left ambiguous).
It’s only natural, then, that the band itself would have changed over the years. Originally called Andrew Jackson Jihad, the band changed their name officially to AJJ four years ago. The band had outgrown the name; it seemed dated and carried too much baggage. But they ultimately weren’t defined by either the old name or the new one—it was always about Sean’s songs. Acerbic, dark—but ultimately holding out for the possibility of hope.
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Last year, “I would try to write a song,” Sean says, “try to write something poetic or beautiful—all I could think of was this fucking orange motherfucker.”
It was like being haunted by a “demon,” he said, the inability to write about other topics—so he decided to exorcise it.
Sean came to Ben with a batch of new songs. “No Justice, No Peace, No Hope” repurposed a civil rights chant. “Normalization Blues” bemoans how we become inured to outrageous acts of division and atrocity. While AJJ has always been politically and socially aware in their songs, the album amounted to the most topical of the band’s career.
Together, Ben and Sean set out to work on the songs. Their earliest albums had been recorded at Audioconfusion, a storied Arizona recording studio in Mesa run by producer Jalipaz Nelson. Their two most recent albums had been done at Elmwood Recording, in Dallas. But for their latest, they took a new approach.
“Me and Sean both live in Tucson now,” Ben says, “which is handy. We haven't lived in the same place in a long time.” They found a place where they could practice; it had the added benefit of a recording set-up. “Typically we use studio time—as the clock's ticking, you're just seeing the dollars ticking away as well, and kind of in a hurry to finish things up. Whereas on this record, we could just kind of take as much time as we want—explore an idea, take a song this way, take it the other way.”
It was a learning experience, as the pair bought new audio equipment, learning how to use it as they went, storing away the knowledge for future records. They showed some early mixes to Craig Schumacher, who ran the WaveLab Recording Studio in Tucson and taught music production at Scottsdale Community College. “Anything sound like shit?” they asked. He assured them nothing jumped out.
Bandmates Preston Bryant, Owen Evans, and Mark Glick—part of AJJ’s roster of studio and touring musicians—came down to record tracks for the album. Friends from around the country, recording on home studio equipment, added tracks as well. Jalipaz Nelson came back to prepare the final mix. And in January of this year, they released Good Luck Everybody into the world.
