Though they attended the same Orange County high schools and, in the instance of siblings Brayden and Camron Ward, shared a household even earlier, the members of the punk-pop outfit the Lovely Bad Things waited until after graduation before uniting as a band. Once assembled in 2009, the Ward brothers joined Tim Hatch and Lauren Curtis in a rotating scheme of vocals and instruments, delivering a brisk, irreverent strain of garage-inflected punk that drew audible cues from the Pixies, the Wipers, and Redd Kross. The vigor of their performances and the quality of their material soon caught the ear of the Burger Records collective, which issued the cassette New Ghost/Old Waves in 2011. Volcom subsequently handled the 2012 CD and LP editions of the same recording. The two labels next collaborated on the Jon Gilbert-produced (OFF!, the Soft Moon) full-length The Late Great Whatever, which surfaced in early 2013. A standalone 7-inch pairing “Space Waste” with “Always Lazy” appeared in 2015, followed in 2017 by the band’s sophomore album, Teenage Grown Ups, again on Burger Records. That release introduced an expanded five-piece configuration that welcomed bassist Wesley Baxter into the fold.
