FIESTA DAY
Fiesta Day, the follow up to Berkley’s entry into the top 100 songs in Dallas-Fort Worth, is his first with no outside contributors. Where Berkley’s previous singles have included members of Austin indie band Watering and Third Man Records’ Luke Schneider, the personal subject in Fiesta Day demanded Berkley’s full attention.
Over the pulsing rhythm that propels the track, Berkely revisits the end of a teenage friendship with clarity brought by time. The track pumps at a windows-down-driving tempo while Berkley pleads with the estranged: I don’t want you near/but I wish you were here/please understand me before the end of the world.
Warbling Moog synthesizers, shaky guitars, and a lonesome piano represent the haunting memories of a lost connection. With this concoction, Berkley sounds like he could warm up an audience for Ethan Gruska or Andrew Bird when live music returns.
The track reclaims the pain of growing apart by reimagining a final conversation. For Berkley, this takes place during a local celebration in his hometown of Pueblo, Colorado known as Fiesta Day, a celebration of of Latinx culture: You don’t have to if you don’t want to wait/you can leave before Fiesta Day/leave before you get stuck behind the parade/you’ll get your chance to say what you want to say.
The video for Fiesta Day is inspired by the first-person experimental video game Paratopic, which switches players’ perspective and place in time. A companion to Berkley’s debut video, Pueblo Nights, Fiesta Day takes viewers through different moments and locales in Berkley’s life, from a stretch of interstate in pre-COVID New Mexico to Berkley’s early 2000s high school years, his 20s spent in Los Angeles, and a 2008 sold-out performance in a northern Colorado theater. All the footage was captured by the artist in his obsessive audio/visual cataloguing of his career.
A short-run zine featuring Pueblo-based Latinx artists and writers accompanies the single’s digital release. FIESTA ZINE includes a download code, visual art, photography, poetry, personal narrative, and a chord chart to play along with Fiesta Day. The limited-issue zine and digital download are both available for pre-order now on alwaysberkley.com and alwaysberkley.bandcamp.com. Fiesta Day will be released and streaming on Friday, February 19.
Interrogating the small spaces shared between what-ifs of the past and the realities of the present is where Berkley’s songwriting sparkles. In Fiesta Day, Berkley continues to blow the dust off the events that shape us to reveal what follows.
Video
Photography: Juli Williams