Action/Adventure

What does the expression ‘ever after’ mean? Most people will automatically assume it’s preceded by the word ‘happily’, but that isn’t necessarily the case. By calling their second full-length Ever After, Chicago’s Action/Adventure are leaning into the ambiguity of those two words. Given their history, that’s not surprising. Having played together since 2014, the band— lead vocalist Blake Evaristo, vocalist/guitarist Brompton Jackson, drummer Adrian Brown, bassist Manny Avila and guitarist Oren Trace—went viral on TikTok in 2020 with “Barricades”, a song that highlighted the obstacles the five-piece faced as an entirely BIPOC band in the pop-punk scene. It was also the band’s first TikTok video, having made their account earlier that day. In 2021, they released their first EP for Pure Noise, Pulling Focus. The next year the label issued the band’s debut album Imposter Syndrome, an accomplished set of songs that undermined the record’s title and its self-deprecating inspiration that Action/Adventure didn’t feel worthy of the attention, acclaim or success they’d been receiving.

This follow-up continues that self-aware sense of modesty. A record brimming with fresh confidence, it moves Action/Adventure even further away from that sea of self-doubt. That doesn’t, however, mean it’s an album free of trials, tribulations or anxiety. In fact, it’s full of them, and very much a reflection of the kind of existence the majority of touring bands have to endure these days—the duality of doing that while also holding down a regular job. It goes without saying that that makes everything so much harder—and it also doubled down on the (very true) cliché of the difficult second record.

“This is literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” admits Jackson. “I definitely hit rock bottom. And this record acknowledges that there's a lot that goes into it. It really is hard. The industry is so different from how we thought it would be when we were kids. So an overarching theme is that duality of everyday life versus band life, and trying to make them work well together—because it's really, really easy to get lost along the way.”
Thankfully, with help from producer Alan Day (Four Year Strong, Knuckle Puck), Action/Adventure were able to get to their destination and make an album that once again defied the pressures it exerted on them.

“Four Year Strong is such a big influence on us,” says Brown, “that working with Al forced us to give these songs more of a distinct identity that broke both us and him out of our usual songwriting tendencies.” Recorded at Ghost Hit Studio in Springfield, Massachusetts, the 11 songs on Ever After form a kind of narrative that details the trials and tribulations of that journey—it opens with “DAYTERROR”, a frenetic, boisterous rush of energy that begins with a question: ‘Is this where I’m meant to be?’ and closes with “Daydream”, which comes with the admission that ‘This isn’t what I signed up for/This is not how I thought it would be.’

“This is what comes after Imposter Syndrome,” says Evaristo, “which is the reality of what we do. I feel like the idea of living your dream is always in a positive context—and it definitely is—but this record is also about the price you pay to live it. And it's fun, but we are paying prices for sure.” Still, this record is proof that all the hard work—both in terms of this album itself and the band’s career as a whole, is worth it. Just like the first record, this one very much validates their decision to continue doing this, as do the guest vocalists who appear on this album. Dan Lambton, the vocalist of rationale., is on the urgent charge of “Something Isn’t Right Here”, a song that also extends and stretches Action/Adventure’s sonic scope, Armor For Sleep’s Ben Jorgensen features on the epic and resilient “Background”, a song for which he also actually wrote the bridge, and British YouTuber/singer Noahfinnce, who appears on “Go Directly To Jail. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200”, a song that explicitly decries the rigged system we all live in.

On the whole, both lyrically and musically, Ever After is heavier than anything Action/Adventure have made before. It’s a subtle but salient difference, and all the result of having to really work to push through the obstacles that stood in the way of making this record. “I think it's a little bit harder in every way,” says Jackson, “because the writing process was harder. But then we also picked more aggressive guitar tones because we knew we wanted it to be a little heavier and more aggressive. We wanted to lean into the things we liked about Pulling Focus and Imposter Syndrome, but also try some new things and see if they worked.” They did. And in so doing, Action/Adventure have once more turned adversity to their advantage. Ever After is an appropriate soundtrack to that central theme of the album, to the trials and tribulations that inspired it, and—most importantly—to the camaraderie and friendship, chemistry and vision that got the band through it.

“We often ask ourselves 'Is this what I should be doing? Is this, after all this time, what I want or need to be doing?'” says Jackson. “And then you come to terms with it. Because I don't really want to do any other things. This is what I want to do. Whether I like that that's what I want to do or not is another question, but we're here! And that’s where the title comes from. It’s not necessarily happily or unhappily ever after, but ‘ever after’ never ends. So the horrors of this record seem to be never-ending—they persist, but so do we!”