But when I wake up
I don’t have to be the one
Just ready made up
Hollowed and alone
Johnny Dynamite is the kind of guy who writes new wave pop like he just rescued an old love letter from a box in a flooded Philly basement, held it up to the light, and saw bite marks on the paper. And the latest single from Dynamite, Drool, moves with the grand, guilty sweep of an ’80s ballad, the kind that once poured from car radios while somebody drove too fast toward a bad decision. You can hear the big shoulders of Crowded House, Bryan Adams, Men At Work, and Asia in the frame, but Dynamite drags that fuzzy FM glow down into a colder room, where romance has fangs.
Dynamite knows the old gestures: the big chorus, the midnight synth, the guitar line built for rearview mirrors – but he loads them with panic, lust, and the weird embarrassment of wanting someone who is bad for your bloodstream. It is a ballad with a stake hidden in its jacket, glamorous enough to sway to, sick enough to sting.
Lyrically, Drool sounds like devotion curdling into damage. Dynamite reaches for images of holy water, blood on the floor, bedside ruin, and a bloodsucker’s kiss, turning romance into a feverish little exorcism where desire and disgust share the same glass. By the time he sings about waking up “hollowed and alone,” the song has moved from infatuation into the sickly aftermath: the part where the spell breaks, but the bite remains.
The song is synth-centric, but it has blood in its cuffs. Johnny Dynamite sings with a bruised, theatrical ache, turning heartbreak into a vampiric fever dream where love feeds, flatters, weakens, and finally leaves its victim blinking at dawn with half a soul and no clean alibi. The drum machine keeps time like a cheap motel clock. The guitars arrive with that old widescreen rock gleam, all chrome and rainwater, while the synths rise like fog off a riverbank after some doomed teenage pact has gone sour.
Max R. Holland’s video understands the song’s appetite. Dynamite stands at the edge of a river, wanders through graffiti-covered ruins at dusk, and looks less like a singer selling a single than a man returning to the place where some private version of himself was buried. The setting gives the track a physical chill: concrete, water, spray paint, bright lights illuminating the faults, all of it turning the romantic drama into something feral.
Watch the video for Drool below:
Behind the name Johnny Dynamite is John Morisi, whose chosen moniker already comes loaded with pulp mythology. The name was borrowed from an anti-hero detective created by his grandfather, comic artist Pete Morisi, giving the project a built-in whiff of trench coats, crooked streets, bad luck, and worse decisions. On Drool, that comic-book underworld becomes emotional geography: love as crime scene, desire as evidence, memory as the witness who keeps changing his story.
Listen to Drool below and order the single (out now via Born Losers Records) here. Johnny Dynamite’s self-titled album is out on May 15th. Pre-order here.
Catch Johnny Dynamite live on his North American tour:
- 7/10 – Providence, RI – The Parlour
- 7/11 – Montreal, QB – P’tit Ours
- 7/12 – Toronto, ON – Monarch Tavern
- 7/14 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Tavern
- 7/15 – Detroit, MI – Lager House
- 7/16 – Chicago, IL – Burlington
- 7/17 – Minneapolis, MN – Cloudland
- 7/19 – Denver, CO – Hi Dive
- 7/21 – Salt Lake City, UT – The International
- 7/23 – Seattle, WA – Sunset
- 7/24 – Portland, OR – Swan Dive
- 7/26 – Sacramento, CA – Cafe Colonial
- 7/29 – San Francisco, CA – Kilowatt Bar
- 7/30 – Los Angeles, CA – Permanent Records
- 7/31 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar
- 8/1 – Las Vegas, NV – The Griffin
- 8/4 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
- 8/5 – Austin, TX – The 13th Floor
- 8/9 – Atlanta, GA – Drunken Unicorn
- 8/10 – Asheville, NC – Static Age Records
- 8/11 – Roanoke, VA – Spot on Kirk
- 8/21 – Brooklyn, NY – Public Records
- 8/22 – Philadelphia, PA – Philamoca
Follow Johnny Dynamite:
