Back in their youth “prime” heydays of the 2000s, human connection wasn’t as much of a minefield of disconnect as it is today for a band like Piebald or the elder emo listeners who grew up with them for that matter. In fact, all of the earliest avenues of Interneting and social media probably did more for people within the scene in bringing each other together into shared physical spaces. Bless any of them who managed to find their persons in the years since and never looked back. The modern day dumpster fire that is dating (or even just trying to make new friends as an adult, for that matter) is really a reason to be depressed.

Well, that is unless you’ve got a new Piebald song to go along with it. “Gentlemen Callers” is a balladeering rock ode to lovers past and this new dystopian age of struggling to find real connections in a social culture mostly boiled down by algorithms, screen addictions, and a perpetual “grass is greener” syndrome. “Just ’cause you’re hot doesn’t mean you’re bothered / If I was to attack,” Travis Shettle shouts along in its chorus, built around the band’s timeless flair for connecting the dots between emo-punk, power-pop, and classic rock. “Convinced ourselves that we never really liked it / ‘Cause we can’t go back.” Millennial nostalgia by all means is filled with a lot of cringe — plenty of cheap thrill capitalistic motivations at that — but let’s not shit ourselves that we weren’t in a much better place when the cold approach in public was just an everyday serendipitous part of life.

Piebald’s Tales for the Rages will be released June 12th on Iodine Recordings.