Slam Dunk Presents Chase Petra plus supports live Downstairs at The Dome

CHASE PETRA’s music has always been about growth: growing up, growing out, growing tired of what others expect of you. On their sophomore album, LULLABIES FOR DOGS (Wax Bodega), the Long Beach, CA trio once again elevates the existential questions that pepper life’s long, unpredictable journey. 

The follow-up to 2018’s Liminal, Lullabies for Dogs alternates timeless melodicism (the somber “Two Nights In New York” and hypnotic acoustic-based “Icarus”) and tireless energy (“Centrifugal Force” and “Bread And Circus,” which crash with the unpredictability of early Panic! At the Disco) – establishing Allen, drummer Evan Schaid and bassist Brooke Dickson as one of the emo scene’s most adroit acts.

And it’s their sense of figuring things out in real time that makes Chase Petra so relatable, as the band’s “quarter-life-crisis pop” elevates deep introspection to navigate the messiness and confusion that comes with modern life. Their songs are guided by the age-old push-and-pull between what it means to grow up and be grown up, to see your once-bright dreams dulled by the responsibilities of adulthood and grapple with the fallout.

“A lot of this record deals with what it means to be an adult who’s playing music and also has bills to pay,” Allen says. “I’ve wanted to do this my whole life, and I’ve never second-guessed that – but now my frontal lobe is fully developed, and I’m starting to wonder if this is really going to make me happy or if it’s going to tear me apart.”