Emotionally charged and with the saturation turned up to 10, Los Angeles based trio Spare Parts for Broken Hearts (SP/BH) released their latest single, “Dirty Milk” — a tune they’ve been holding onto since pre-covid times. Put on a shelf to mature, the song’s original meaning has grown to encapsulate an arid and unstable frustration that has spread across the US.
“We recorded “Dirty Milk” just before the end of our world began. After time passed and we settled into the pandemic, as we fought alongside our friends and communities who began to dismantle and slowly attempt to correct any semblance of history through protest and as we watched our government so obviously expose itself to even the most oblivious observer, we looked back at “Dirty Milk” and felt that it never seemed more relevant in its message,” says the band’s founder and front-person Sarah Green.
Originally, the song’s strong angst was inspired by childhood letdowns and missed opportunities to grow due to a lack of careful nurture. Its roots formed from the lack of stability felt years ago.
“The song is about lack, it’s about recourse. It’s about being a kid whose parents are ill-equipped to handle the responsibility of a whole other human turning out secure, so we learn these attachment styles within that dynamic and it sets us up to seek out that repeated pattern in others throughout life,” Green notes. “Now we’re adults and we’re still lost, expected to know more than we know and need less than we do.”
However, like most things that have happened this year, what was intended of the song changed with the pace of the times and all that preceded it: from the decades of misinformation and deception perpetrated by factions of government officials to the chaos and further derailment of any semblance of an honest establishment over the past four years. And, with an abysmal start to the next decade (viruses, protests, a tumultuous election), 2020 has left many in the USA desperate to change or challenge everything.
Green, a musician and individual who draws inspiration from her own personal journey as a member of the LGBTQIA community and as an activist — pens down personal frustrations that, with time, permeate into a much stronger emotion, one she believes can be applied to much of the let downs of society.
“Here we are now in present time, needing more than we’ve ever needed, and the system we are to rely upon and invest in is a hoax. The nuclear family has proved itself the same, it’s all the same,” says Green. “You’re fending for yourself as always and for what seems like forever. “Are you anonymous, are you just like me?” is us asking, do you see me? I’m like you too and I think we’ve been fighting the same battle together for so long, from the same side, against the same thing. Now we unite, what we’re being fed isn’t, and has never been, good enough.”
Produced by DVNCY (Bebe Rexha, Wrenn, LAYNE, Mothica) and mastered by Dave Harris (Studio-B Mastering), the singles’s overall sound tracks with the band’s high energy, maximum fuzz style drenched in “weltschmerz” (world-weariness or angst over the human condition).
Spare Parts for Broken Hearts’ debut album is set to drop spring of 2021. For more on their new single or upcoming release, make sure to check out their website and follow them on social media.
Words: Patti Sanchez
