Veteran Minneapolis punk band Dillinger Four have released “Don’t Happy Be Worry,” their first new song in 18 years.
Despite not releasing music for nearly two decades, the band has remained active, with singer-guitarist Erik Funk noting that in a lengthy statement:
“So it’s been something like 18 years since we released any new music, and the inescapable questions are why? And…why now? The honest truth? I have no fucking idea. We’ve been active that whole time playing shows, and we never really stopped writing music; we just sort of stopped finishing music.
We’ve never tried to do this band as some kind of a career, and so we’ve never felt the pressure that comes from that. We do feel extremely grateful that, for whatever reasons, people all over the world are still willing to come check us out when we’re playing and hoping to hear us do something new. If we’ve ever felt anything resembling pressure to do the band, it’s for that reason alone.
The balance of the shit we’ve been doing in our lives, parenting, work, hobbies, etc., has just seemed to fall into place in the past couple years to where now there’s some room to get back to finishing some music. It feels good. It takes more time than it used to still. We can’t just drop everything for two weeks and make a whole album. Slowly but surely, though, we’ve now got a stack of some new stuff, and it’s time to start getting it out there. But as with all things Dillinger Four throughout our history, we reserve the right to do it how, when, and wherever we want.”
“Don’t Happy Be Worry” is a direct and melodic punk rock track that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1970s. Its approach to melodicism is pop punk in the Buzzcocks vein, marrying power pop anthemics to a driving punk base.
While the song did not come with a proper album announcement, as Funk mentioned, the band has a “stack of new stuff” ready to go.
Dillinger Four are about to kick off a short tour of Japan. Take a listen to “Don’t Happy Be Worry” below.
