Growing old sucks — but sometimes slowing down is exactly the move. Nick Vicario, the mastermind behind Portland-via-LA jangly power pop punk project Smirk, has announced a new album, ‘Speculative Fiction’, due July 3 via Smoking Room Records. To kick things off, he’s sharing lead single Dog Years — a wiry, introspective gut-punch of a track that sets the tone perfectly for where Smirk is headed.
“When this band started in LA, it was a crazy time in my life,” Vicario admits. “I was crashing cars, doing drugs — I was doing horrible things and destroying my life.”
‘Speculative Fiction’ doesn’t run from that past — it stares it down. Thematically, the record takes a fresh angle on a classic punk preoccupation: unrest in the suburbs. But instead of youthful rage, this version deals with looking back at old indiscretions, sitting with their consequences, and figuring out who you are on the other side of all that chaos.
“A lot of [the album] dealt with the ‘old me’ and some of the crazy life choices I made while abusing substances,” Vicario says. “So while the record is partially about the ‘old me,’ it’s also very much about putting them in my current world and the new set of problems that come from that.”
About Dog Years
Dog Years opens with a twangy clean-tone riff that lands somewhere between Jeffrey Lee Pierce / Gun Club and Mission of Burma — tense, coiled, unmistakably punk — before primitive synth tones bubble up underneath and a flat-out incendiary guitar solo (dueling leads, no less) tears the whole thing open. Lyrically, it digs into isolation, burnout, and the spiral of going through the motions. “It also deals with suicidal ideation and not wanting to bother my friends,” Vicario says plainly. “It’s about self-isolation and the spiral that comes with it.”
Who Is Smirk?
Vicario’s musical roots run deep. Growing up in Portland in the early 2000s, he was woven into the scene that gave us Poison Idea and the Wipers — playing in bands young, rubbing elbows with members of Tragedy and Criminal Damage, and by age 12 leading The Diskords, who earned the blessing of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll and got taken under the wing of The Exploding Hearts. From there, a string of projects followed — hardcore outfit Cower, indie pop band Wild Ones (who eventually landed on Topshelf Records), plus stints with Public Eye, Cemento, Crisis Man, and touring runs with Surfer Blood and Dreamdecay — before Vicario zeroed in on Smirk, releasing a self-titled LP in 2021 and ‘Material’ in 2022.
What’s Different This Time
‘Speculative Fiction’ marks a genuine sonic shift. Smirk is pulling back from the pedal-to-the-floor punk of earlier releases in favor of something more deliberate — mid-paced, pop-conscious, nodding to Big Star, The Paul Collins Beat, and early Stiff Records releases, but filtered through the scrappy DIY spirit of Guided by Voices. “I wanted to be more deliberate and have my music reflect what I listen to,” Vicario says. “I wanted to bring in my current musical influences — even though they’re still rooted in classic punk — and throw in a bit of pop and metal here and there.”
Recorded mostly in his home studio, the album pulls in a stacked cast of collaborators: Ross Farrar (Ceremony), Max Smadja (RIXE), Ryan Mangione-Smith (Advertisement), and current live members who moonlight in Hotline TNT, Poison Ruin, and Pardoner. A handful of tracks were tracked with Ian Rose at Daisy Chain Studios in Brooklyn, with Andy Oswald handling the mix.
‘Speculative Fiction’ track list
- Greetings
- Victimry
- Cheap Greed
- Going Off To Die
- Sistine Junk
- Dog Years
- I Shall Be Released
- Perfect World
- Abide
- Ritual Torture
- Interlude
- Shit Song
- Crime Pays
Pre-Save / Pre-Order ‘Speculative Fiction’
Live Dates
TBA — stay tuned.
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