I do too.
Today, Los Angeles-based singer and guitarist Will Paquin announces his self-released, guitar-forward, psych-laced, garage-rock debut album Hahaha out September 12th. The title says it all– an album of high-voltage creative chaos laced in something rock tends to forget: humor.
With the announce comes “I Work So Hard,” a song Paquin originally started in middle school, bearing the mark of the psych rock like Ty Segall and the Oh Sees he loved in his formative years, but recontextualized it to his current life. About the track Paquin reflects, “I kept falling into patterns of working with no purpose, going through the motions just to check off boxes. The song is about coming to terms with my own false productivity.”
“I Work So Hard” joins last month’s single and album title track “Hahaha,” a song expressly built to ignite a crowd from the very first clang of a guitar. That’s not all for Paquin though, he’s ready to take the new energetic songs on the road, with the announce of a fall tour across the US and Europe. Full routing is below and tickets are on-sale this Friday at 10am local, buy HERE.
Will Paquin used to write in isolation — songs came together behind closed doors, in bedrooms, dorm rooms, backseats. Even the years since he cracked the door open in 2020 with “Chandelier” – a woozy, glitch-pop oddity that caught fire online that has since gone gold – have only sporadically been punctuated by the release of a handful of standalone singles and a couple of EPs. “Sometimes I keep things a secret just to make them feel like they’re only mine,” he says.
But Hahaha — his debut full-length album, out this September and still staunchly self-released — is the sound of Paquin breaking out of the bedroom. It’s loud, raw, chaotic, and full of life. And there’s no better demonstration of this than the title track. “Hahaha” is a high-voltage jolt of pure release expressly built to ignite a crowd from the very first clang of the guitar. “I wanted a song I could shout and that could be screamed right back at me,” Paquin says.
The shift from solitude to communion runs throughout the record. Much of it was written while Paquin was on the road navigating a breakup, mingling that inherent sadness with the feeling of being on stage night after night embraced by the crowd “I was on tour, surrounded by live, loud music, and so there’s also this energy there. It’s almost like a sarcastic ‘hahaha,’ with tears in my eyes”.
Much of the album feels like a time capsule — a collection of ideas and sounds that Paquin has been quietly nurturing for years. As he began shaping the record, he found himself drawn back to the music that first sparked his imagination — the layered, melodic pull of The Beatles, the gritty urgency of The Oh Sees and Ty Segall. In the studio, these early influences blended with the more experimental textures he immersed himself in during the recording process, listening to The Magic by Deerhoof, Can’s boundary-pushing catalog, and Transmissions From the Satellite Heart by The Flaming Lips on repeat. The result is a record that doesn’t just reference his past but reanimates it, layering old obsessions with new discoveries in a sound that’s entirely his own.
Now, for the first time, these diverse reference points come together in a cohesive whole, shaped by the passage of time and Paquin’s current perspective. “This album is kind of like re-centering what I actually like and what I want to put out to the world,” he explains.
Remaining independent and free from label constraints, he took full creative control. He produced the album alongside childhood friend and longtime collaborator William Levin. The finishing touches came from Nathan Boddy (James Blake, Geordie Greep, Nilufer Yanya) who handled the mix, while Mike Bozzi (Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Tyler, the Creator) mastered the final product.
Hahaha is a celebration of shared energy, of chaos, of the kind of laughter that erupts when you’re fully alive in the moment. It’s a guitar-forward, psych-laced, garage-rock catharsis to be played out to the masses. Those closed bedroom doors have swung open.
FULL TOUR DATES
UNITED STATES:
SEP 25 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
SEP 26 – Richmond, VA @ Banditos
SEP 27 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
SEP 28 – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
SEP 30 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (Purgatory)
OCT 1 – Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR
OCT 3 – Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
OCT 4 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk
OCT 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Scribble
OCT 8 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
OCT 10 – Portland, OR @ Mission Theater
OCT 11 – Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
OCT 14 – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
OCT 16 – Milwaukee, WI @ Falcon Bowl
OCT 17 – Minneapolis, MN @ Icehouse
OCT 19 – Chicago, IL @ Schubas
OCT 21 – Toronto, ON @ Sound Garage
OCT 23 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
OCT 24 – Providence, RI @ Fete Lounge
OCT 25 – Boston, MA @ Cafe 939
EUROPE:
NOV 4 – Utrecht, Netherlands – EKKO
NOV 5 – Paris, France – Pitchfork Festival
NOV 8 – London, UK – Pitchfork Festival
NOV 9 – Southampton, UK – The Joiners
NOV 10 – Bristol, UK – Rough Trade
NOV 12 – Dublin, Ireland – The Academy 2
NOV 14 – Glasgow, UK – Audio
NOV 15 – Leeds, UK – Leeds In The City
NOV 17 – Stockholm, Sweden – Hus 7
NOV 18 – Oslo, Norway – Blå
NOV 19 – Berlin, Germany – Studio dB
NOV 21 – Milan, Italy – Arci Bellezza
NOV 22 – Bologna, Italy – Covo
