Boys Life Are Far From ‘Ordinary’ On Reunion EP

Boys Life (photo: Shawn Brackbill).

Kansas City, Mo., underground rock vets Boys Life will break a 29-year-hiatus from releasing new music with Ordinary Wars, a four-song EP arriving Nov. 21 from Spartan Records. The lead track, “Ordinary War,” is out now.

“I think about how short life is a lot. I think we buy into a fantasy that America, money, status, time and titles are real,” says frontman Brandon Butler. “Those things are really just fabrications in the framework of the American psyche. Our government has failed us. Corporate America owns every facet of our lives. We’re all glued to social media. Cheap dopamine hits scrolling by. Your ideas and feelings use to be the only thing someone couldn’t take from you and now they found a way to take those. America is a business and we all work for the company. If one were to fight a war against these fabrications, one would have to start breaking that framework and value system down. The war would be inside each of us. Denying those forces trying to buy our minds and time. We are a part of something much bigger. So, it’s not an ordinary war.”

Boys Life formed in 1993 and garnered acclaim both for their self-titled 1995 debut and the following year’s Departures and Landfalls. The group, which is rounded out by guitarist Joe Winkle, bassist John Rejba and drummer John Anderson, was part of a close-knit, emo-leaning Midwest music scene that also featured Christie Front Drive, Giants Chair, Braid and Knapsack.

Boys Life reunited in 2015 and 2024, with last year’s activity leading to recording sessions with producer Duane Trower. The EP sports material written during studio jams (“Equal in Measure,” “Bleeds”) as well as other cuts birthed from rehearsals (“Ordinary War,” “Always”).

“Boys Life has always been a band of brothers, and like many families, we have experienced ups and downs in our relationships throughout the years,” Anderson says. “We have always been an intensely serious band and you can hear that intensity in our music. It’s shocking that we can get together for four days and create songs like these, but also it’s not shocking for some reason. The experience of working together in itself is deeply meaningful.”