Song Review: ‘Lost Angeles’ by The Aces

It’s a weird thing, loving and hating a place all at once. When something happens – someone happens – that ruins everything you used to love about a place. When it feels like your heart is breaking every time it beats, thumping with love it can’t shake while it crumbles for what it has lost. It’s a unique feeling, and it’s one that The Aces have captured in their latest release, ‘Lost Angeles’.

‘Lost Angeles’ is the second single from the band since their 2018 album debut When My Heart Felt Volcanic. It follows the first in March, ‘Daydream’, a shimmering, nostalgia-induing (and eerily timely) song about the frustrations of being away from a loved one.

Now, the Utah quartet – of sisters Cristal and Alisa Ramirez (vocals/guitar, and drums, respectively), Katie Henderson (lead guitar/vocals) and McKenna Petty (bass) – are back with their second single, about “that experience of being infatuated by Hollywood and a new city, but then having the excitement and romance of it ripped away at the hands of heartbreak.”

Though inspired by a poem written by Alisa in the band’s phase of hotel-living before moving to L.A., the song’s lyrics (co-written by Simon Wilcox and Mike Green) are so universal that ‘Lost Angeles’ could easily be replaced by any city. The romance and excitement you feel when you first arrive is the same, and so is the crushing defeat that hits when it all goes wrong. It’s a song about loving and losing. Names don’t matter.

“It’s this weird back and forth kind of what Los Angeles is about,” Alisa said about the song.

“It just turned into telling that story of how you can love a place so much and then how quickly it can be tainted for you, too.”

‘Lost Angeles’ is a bittersweet ode to the dark sides of L.A., taking The Aces’ signature sounds – all punchy guitars, plucky bass notes, and crashing drums that blend and reverberate with crisp vocals – further along the new musical path that ‘Daydream’ began on.

Give it a listen here.

‘Lost Angeles’ smacks of a personal and musical maturity, a confidence that only time can bring.

Their lyrics, already so candidly personal (but so gut-punchingly relatable), have taken another hit of truth serum – a testament to the band’s dynamic, rooted by ver a decade of friendship. There’s little the girls wouldn’t know, or be comfortable sharing with one another; and now, the world.

Sonically, it is the perfect indie-pop, summertime tune – it’s made to be played full-blast from a car stereo as you hurtle down a highway, windows down, hands hanging out the window – but the song draws most power from these lyrics. The fatigued heartbreak of the verses and pre-chorus, lamenting what “used to be romantic / but now it makes me panic”, build to an explosive chorus.

“Lost Angeles, I’ve had enough / Go ahead and take me home / Lost Angeles, you’re the loneliest city I’ve ever known”

Their lyrics get to the core of a broken (but still pulsing) heart, of the frustration of stills loving what you should hate. The Aces are spot on, often, “it’s all your faults I love about you.”

‘Lost Angeles’ is a show of everything the band do best: capturing such specific, yet undeniably universal, feelings in an infectious groove you just can’t help but move to. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had the song on repeat since it dropped. It’s an easy listen, it doesn’t have the first-release smash as ‘Daydream’ has, but it is definitely a worthy second single not to be neglected.

It’s clear The Aces know exactly where their strengths lie, and if this song is the indicator of their musical evolution, this next project is going to be hard to ignore.

Stream The Aces’ new single ‘Lost Angeles’ and ‘Daydream’ on Spotify.