We Speak Alternative

Senses Fail Play Still Searching in Full at Warsaw on December 18

Published

2 days ago

November 5, 2026

Photo: @sensesfail

Twenty years after Still Searching made Senses Fail one of the defining bands of emo’s biggest decade, the New Jersey band is playing the album front to back every night this fall, and on Friday, December 18 the tour closes at Warsaw in Brooklyn.

Senses Fail play Warsaw on Friday, December 18, with Koyo and Initiate opening the night. The Brooklyn date closes the band’s fall North American tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of Still Searching, with the album performed in full each night.

Still Searching, released in October 2006, was the band’s second album and the one that broke them wide, carried by singles like Calling All Cars and Can’t Be Saved. Frontman Buddy Nielsen, the band’s sole original member, has kept Senses Fail running through two decades of emo revivals, and this tour is the fullest look back the band has ever taken on stage.

Warsaw, at 261 Driggs Avenue in Greenpoint, doubles as a Polish community hall and one of Brooklyn’s most beloved rock rooms, the kind of floor where an album full of singalong choruses turns into a room wide choir. A second night follows on Saturday, December 19, and the Friday show is the tour finale, which usually brings the loosest and loudest version of a band.

For fans who wore this record out the first time around, and for the younger crowd that found it later, a full album performance of Still Searching is the whole point of the night.

Darren Jessee Returns With Wistful New Single “Shoulder Season”

Published

1 day ago

November 6, 2026

We Speak Media

Darren Jessee. Photo by Dustin Condren.

Darren Jessee has been the drummer behind Ben Folds Five and the songwriter behind Hotel Lights, and his new single sounds like a man deciding not to put the pen down. “Shoulder Season,” recorded by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman, previews a forthcoming solo album due in 2027.

North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Darren Jessee (Ben Folds Five, Hotel Lights) is proud to present “Shoulder Season,” the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist’s brand new single lifted from his forthcoming solo album that will see a 2027 release. Recorded by GRAMMY-winning musician and producer Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and mixed by Peter Katis (The National, Kurt Vile), “Shoulder Season” traces the paths people chart in and around our lives over the years. The track also invites close listening, which in turn draws attention to Jessee’s evocative lyrics as well as the nuanced instrumental performances he and Kaufman captured on tape. “‘Shoulder Season’ … I liked the words by themselves,” Jessee says. “They suggest perseverance and resilience during a season of time. The term shoulder season means a transitional time of year.” Watch the music video for “Shoulder Season” on YouTube.

Darren Jessee was in a period of personal upheaval. His mother had recently passed away after a short illness. He was also touring as a drummer for the Americana act Chatham County Line, a gig that he enjoyed but one that kept him from performing much as a solo artist. And then his label rep at Bar/None, home of Jessee’s last seven albums, retired. In the wake of it all, Jessee found himself wondering if it was perhaps time to set aside the burden of managing a songwriting career and simply lean into his work as a drummer. “But then I just kept finding these songs and enjoying them,” he says of his forthcoming solo showcase that symbolizes a new beginning for the veteran musician — an organic, hushed and transcendent sound very much inspired by the blizzard that the album was recorded in.

Stay tuned for more music and information on Darren Jessee’s forthcoming solo album to be announced in the coming weeks. Jessee will be making the following appearances in November:

November 12 — Wake Forest, NC — Wake Forest Listening Room

November 18 — Greensboro, NC — Flat Iron (with Natalie Jane Hill)