Courtesy of Patrick Flynn

When Fiddlehead frontman Patrick Flynn’s mother passed away, he was all alone. His wife and their kids were on a holiday vacation at sea and there was no way for them get back to him. Enter “The Dogs”, as guitarist Alex Henery and bassist Nick Hinsch didn’t hesitate to hop on a plane from different ends of the country to be with their grieving friend. That’s some real brotherhood if there ever was one in a day and age where most of us are dealing with the slow fade of close connections where it’s like we’re lucky to even receive a text back from the faces we once regarded as our closest allies. Everyone’s wrapped up in their screens. Everyone’s wrapped up in their own lives. It sucks getting older and being the last one left who hasn’t partnered up — or at the very least doesn’t have a whole band that’s got your back to help get your mind right.

Listening to “The Dogs”, you can’t help but wonder why we all can’t have adult friendships like the ones the guys in Fiddlehead have. Flynn paints the scene positively with the best parts of his bros over supercharged riffs and gratuitous melody at every round, big upped in volume by big indie producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, MJ Lenderman.) “But I got Al and I got Dow, strumming, humming, and showing me how the pain of the world can be channeled right out in music and songs about pain so raw,” Flynns sings over a beaming post-hardcore anthem that helps neutralize any of the bombs of life coming his way. “Brother Bogesh” Nick Hinsch and Stoic Costa are there, too, to keep them at bay.

It’s what “building community” should look like, but instead has been decayed by phone culture, which has begat the utmost flaky of behaviors, which has begat a mass disconnect in all ends in our lives, be it keeping the friends you have, trying to make new ones, and yeah, sure, the hellscape that is trying to date if you’re single and missed the last chopper out of ‘Nam before brain rot caused the whole world to go to hell. Looking out Fiddlehead’s window into theirs, though, it’s a beautiful, warm view. What you see and hear is shouting evidence that the adult loneliness epidemic is all very self-inflicted. And yet, it’s frustratingly out of our hands if you’re the only one who is all-in.

Fiddlehead’s Baby I’ll Change is available now on Run for Cover Records.