Meteor Police Wrote an Anti-Summer Song for a Summer Contest

Credit Juliann Fetz

Given "summer" as a prompt for a 24-hour songwriting contest in 2024, Meteor Police wrote the least summery song they could: "Unwanted In July," a portrait of the suburban punk kid nobody wanted around. It's the closing track on the Brick, New Jersey quartet's forthcoming album, out August 28 on Mint 400 Records.

Meteor Police call their sound "post something," which is roughly where they sit: between post-punk and '90s post-hardcore, in their own telling too heavy for indie rock and too soft for punk. The single carries that friction into its lyrics, pushing back at anyone who'd write off a punk kid. "You've got to suffer to be punk rock," one line goes, set against a haze of suburban nostalgia, resentment, and self-mythology.

"'Unwanted In July' is meant to invoke the nostalgia of being a suburban punk kid on summer holiday and highlight both the good and bad elements from a troubled childhood," the band says.

The track spent a while shelved before they came back to it, keeping the original music mostly intact while reworking some lyrics and adding trumpet from Joe Gullace. The bridge takes a short detour into a horn-driven, almost Spanish-punk passage before the song snaps back to its main charge.

Meteor Police are bassist Bill Pompeo, guitarist Dustin Schoonmaker, drummer Justin Wright, and vocalist Shawn Clancy. Common ground runs through Fugazi, Les Savy Fav, and Q and Not U, though individual tastes stretch from Deftones and Pantera to The Blood Brothers, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and Thee Oh Sees.

That spread explains some of the band's allergy to a clean genre label. It also traces back to the Ocean County punk scene they came up in, where shows have long survived in VFW halls, fire stations, community centers, and suburban basements. Meteor Police have since found a foothold in nearby Asbury Park without cutting ties to Brick.

For the new record, the band wanted shorter songs that didn't get simpler. Their earlier material carried traces of surf rock and often ran past five minutes; these move quicker while leaning harder into pop, intensity, and intricate arrangement. The irony and self-deprecation stay, but "Unwanted In July" and "Invalid Geography" make more room for vulnerability.

Written across a stretch of lineup turnover, the album was recorded by Rudy Meier at Yung Bull Recording in Brick and mastered by Pat Noon at Eight Sixteen Recording.

Listen to "Unwanted In July" below.