Written during the pandemic and in the wake of its aftermath, the songs on Vaudevileins’ new album Lights Out explore darker themes, the sense of giving up, and inevitability—a reflection of 2020’s isolation and the era’s political and societal landscape.

Lights Out is the third album for Vaudevileins, whose members are Bill Aldridge (bass), Brennen Chouinard (drums/vox), Alex Jaskula (lead guitar), and Jeff Julian (vox/guitar). The band has roots in Chicago, Joliet, and Kankakee and also considers Champaign-Urbana a home away from home.

The eight-song album leans into the band’s signature energy, loud guitars, and memorable melodies, which started with 2011’s self-titled album, continued with a collection of EPs and singles, and solidified with 2016’s Magician. Lights Out spotlights themes of transitions and endings, mining the fears of not being understood even as the album underlines precisely who Vaudevileins is: “There’s not a lot of quiet on this record,” Julian says. “It’s a banger from beginning to end.”

The sense of heartbreak amid big guitars and driving beats is rooted in the album’s foundation—Julian wrote early drafts during the stay-at-home days of COVID.

“That’s the bulk of where this suite of songs comes from,” Julian says. “I was doing a bunch of streaming shows on Facebook and Twitch to pass the time, playing two-hour acoustic shows. I wrote a lot of material then.”

Once things opened up again, the band got back to work rehearsing, writing, and demoing songs before heading into the studio with Mark Wyman over the course of three sessions in 2022 and 2023 at ToneGood Studio in Urbana. They recorded the remainder of the album at Aldridge’s studio, Third City Sound in Joliet. Long-time collaborator Jeff Halland mixed and mastered Lights Out at his home studio in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Jaskula joined the quartet in fall 2021, and his influence, too, is notable on Lights Out.

“Anytime a new voice and perspective is added, it changes the way we approach songwriting, arranging, and even rehearsal,” Julian says. “He does things differently. It’s us, but with his fingerprints on it, and that’s awesome.”

The remaining three Vaudevileins—Chouinard, Aldridge, and Julian—have played together for nearly 15 years. That’s minus a 2018 hiatus and plus a handful of years with other bands: Chouinard and Julian played together in Chicagoland’s Deconstructing Jim from 2006-09, and Aldridge and Julian played in John Condron & the Benefit in 2009-10.

The album artwork for Lights Out is from Chicago-photographer-turned-Denver-transplant Susie Inverso, who photographed the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, which was seven months after Vaudevileins’ last album came out. Lights Out was released April 8, 2024, the same day as the most recent total solar eclipse.

“I guess we’re only releasing music on or near eclipses from here on out,” Julian says. “We didn’t intend for it to take this long; we’re busy and old and tired and slow. But we finished it, we think it’s good, and we’re excited for people to hear it.”