Sublime is back with that style, “still straight from Long Beach.” Last year proved to be a busy one for the Southern California trio. Founding members – bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh – reunited together with Jakob Nowell, the son of original lead singer, Bradley Nowell, in December of 2023 for a concert tribute to Bad Brains frontman, H.R. Since then, the band has been playing countless shows around the country including Coachella, Riot Fest, and No Values, with stops earlier this year in Brazil and Costa Rica.
The band has been jamming together and working on new music for quite some time now. The first single they released together was last year’s “Feel Like That,” a collaboration with reggae and dub band, Stick Figure.
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The song featured vocals from Jakob, as well as prerecorded vocals from his father. Earlier this year Sublime announced they were working in the studio with producers Travis Barker (blink-182) and John Feldmann (Goldfinger) to release a new album.
In June they announced that they would be releasing the first single, “Ensenada.”
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Fans who have been fortunate enough to catch one of their recent shows have heard the new single, as the band has been including it regularly in their setlists, including at BeachLife this past May, and last month at the Vans Warped Tour stop in Washington, D.C. Of course, the band (sans Jakob) are no strangers to Warped.
Gaugh was recently quoted backstage as saying, “Wow, Warped tour! This has come full circle now with Sublime starting on the very first Warped and now Warped is back together with Sublime at the center. Expect nothing less than utter Chaos in Long Beach.” For his part, Wilson jokingly said, “Happy to be back on the warped tour again after all these years. I guess all is forgiven!”
For those who have not been able to catch the band recently, Jakob himself stopped by at The World Famous KROQ studios with Kevin Ryder to play the song live on air with an acoustic guitar. “’Ensenada’ feels very personal,”
Nowell said. “I poured a lot of myself into this record and at times it was very emotionally challenging. The entire time we’re working on it, it’s like my dad was there, it’s like I could feel his presence. I hope the fans will hear that all we were trying to do was have fun and match that classic sound – and if they hear that then we did our job right.”
Although this will be the first piece of 100% completely original music from the band in nearly three decades, and with a new lead singer, once you hear “Ensenada” it’s like the band is picking up right where Bradley left off back in 1996.
Musically it captures the classic Southern California ska punk sound that Sublime helped define. Vocally, it’s haunting just how much Jakob sounds like his dad, while bringing his own unique experiences and elements into the song. If anything, this single just whets your appetite anticipating how incredible the rest of the album is going to sound.
To give the new song the proper send off, Sublime appears on the Klein.Ally. show at the KROQ studios and chatted with the morning show. They launched the studio version of “Ensenada” for their fans. KROQ is the only station playing it through today’s release.
“Ensenada” begins streaming everywhere today.
Catch the live Sublime experience at Warped Tour in Long Beach July 26th and 27th, if you miss them there, you can also catch them at Fear, Loathing and Sublime in Las Vegas on August 15th and 16th, or at Bayfest in San Diego, October 17 through the 19th!
