Bad Cop Bad Cop

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Photo by: So Finch Photography In the final moments of “ Dead Friends, ” the penultimate track of the new Lighten Up , Bad Cop Bad Cop guitarist-vocalist Stacey Dee sings, “ So try to love your life, while you can. ” These words serve as a powerful thesis for Lighten Up ( Fat Wreck Chords ) the SoCal punk group’s fourth full-length. The album paints a striking portrait of life’s hard-won victories and hard-fought losses. “ I think that ’ s what I write my songs about, ” Dee says. “ Life is hard, but it's still beautiful. Stop picking the hard shit to look at — look at the beautiful stuff too. Lighten up. ” Dee and her bandmates — bassist-vocalist Linh Le, drummer-vocalist Myra Gallarza, and new guitarist Alex Windsor — know what it takes to persevere. Resilience surfaces throughout Lighten Up . In “ Strugglinh , ” Le confronts self-doubt and finds strength, and in “ See Me Now, ” she turns family loss into triumph. “ Straight Out of Detox ” details a transformational night in Dee ’ s life, and “ Note to Self ” is her reminder to keep things in perspective, aided by iconic LA underground rapper 2mex . Playing like a big-hearted sibling to the Jim Carroll Band ’ s iconic “ People Who Died, ” “ Dead Friends ” has been in the works for years. “ This was the first time that I dug in to tell stories that I was too afraid to talk about prior, ” Dee says. “ We've made records that were unapologetically strong, but the way we got to be unapologetically strong was dealing with things like this. ” Unapologetically personal best describes Lighten Up. “ It started with having the girls over on Sundays. I would cook brunch, we ’ d drink tons of bottles of Prosecco, and we would write music together, ” Dee says. “ This was family the entire time. It was who we trusted, who we loved, who we knew we could work with. ” That ’ s why Bad Cop Bad Cop recorded at the Compound in Long Beach, home to veteran producer Antoine Arvizu ( Sublime, Ryan Bingham ). The band loved recording the si