Kevin Bronson on April 7th, 2022

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Tijuana Panthers have come a long way since emerging early last decade as a prickly surf-punk trio out of Long Beach.

The band — after a decade and five albums, it’s still singer-bassist Daniel Michicoff, guitarist-vocalist Chad Wachtel and drummer-vocalist Phil Shaheen — were borne of a West Coast sound yet have certainly not always adhered to it. But this week brought a new single, “Helping Hand,” an solid, old-school garage-rocker that leads off Tijuana Panthers’ sixth full-length, “Halfway to Eighty,” out June 24 via Innovative Leisure.

The trio, who share songwriting duties (the new single and its riffs come courtesy of Wachtel) again worked with stalwart LBC producer Jonny Bell (Crystal Antlers, Chicano Batman, Hanni El Khatib, among others) at his Jazzcats Studio. They said they tried to channel the sounds and attitude of SoCal punk legends like Black Flag and Circle Jerks. “What I told Jonny when he was mixing ‘Slacker,’” Shaheen says, “was, like, ‘Just keep it South Bay,’ and he already knew what I was saying.”

The video, directed by Harley Astroga, casts the trio as employees at a movie theater. The album title, meanwhile, winks at growing old. “Not to get all spiritual about it, but when we were younger, we played really hard for nobody, and now the fans do all the work for us,” ” Michicoff says, “They have the fun and we just kind of rock out, and it’s nice. It’s cool to sit back and play the songs and watch. They’re putting on a show for us.”

||| Watch: The video for “Helping Hand”

||| Previously: “Little Pamplemousse,” “Path of Totality,” live at Outpost Fest, “Front Window Down,” “Torpedo,” “Nobo,” “Four Horsemen,” “Cherry Street,” live at the Santa Monica Pier, “Boardwalk”