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The profile · researched 12 October 2026
Andrés: the Bakersfield jazz hound who sings his way onto post-hardcore bills
Andrés Aparicio has spent nine years releasing albums under his own first name and touring clubs as the odd voice on heavy line-ups. Purgatoryland, out on Blue Swan Records in May 2026, is the first of those records with a label behind it, and it has kept him on the road all year.
A second-grade orchestra trip, then Orange County
The origin story Andrés Aparicio tells is a school field trip in Bakersfield, California, to see a symphonic orchestra, which sent him to the violin as a child. Guitar and songwriting came later, and the orchestral habit stayed: he has pointed to his own track "A Child's Garden of Verses" as the clearest case of it. The other early pull was televisual rather than classical — watching rock bands perform in music videos and noticing how much of the effect was staging.
He moved to Orange County and began putting out music under his first name alone in 2017. By the time a Fullerton College student-paper profile caught up with him, he was 26 and running a working touring economy without a label: 20 to 30 shows per run, roughly four crossings of the United States a year plus one trip to the United Kingdom, playing rock clubs to crowds he put at 200 to 500. In the same piece he named Drake as his principal influence — "his honesty, his vulnerability, his emotion" — which is not what the bills he plays would suggest.
Five albums before anyone signed him
The discography under the Andrés name starts with Strange Memories on This Nervous Night in 2017 and runs through Heroes, Villains, and All That Jazz in 2018, Once Upon a Time in Bakersfield in 2019, Adventures of a DIY Astronaut in 2022 and Sonny Torres and the Multiverse of Sadness in 2023. The hometown has never left the material — Once Upon a Time in Bakersfield is explicitly about growing up there, performed to rooms several hundred miles from it. The DIY Astronaut title stuck hard enough that his official site still sits at thediyastronaut.com.
Local recognition arrived early: the Bakersfield Californian's music columnist Matt Munoz placed Aparicio's new album among the things that made his year in a late-2018 round-up, alongside a Jack White concert. National recognition came sideways, through support slots. He has opened for Hoobastank, The Fall of Troy and Hail the Sun, and secured a guest feature from the lead singer of Issues in December 2019. Between 2024 and 2026 he also released a run of singles, several of them in Spanish — "No Naces Así", "Fue Real", "El Eco de Tu Aliento" — which sit apart from the album cycle.
Purgatoryland, and a label at last
Purgatoryland came out on 15 May 2026, his debut for Blue Swan Records: ten tracks, 31 minutes, the shortest-form thing he has made. He announced it himself as the label debut rather than letting the label do it. Two songs got official videos, "The One Who Stayed Away" and "Mr. Meantime", the latter picked as song of the week by the Metalcore Nerds podcast when he appeared on it on 14 May, the day before release — an episode spent almost entirely on comics, anime, the year's films and The Acolyte rather than on the record.
The critical paper trail is thin. Purgatoryland has not drawn broadsheet or major-outlet reviews; on Album of the Year it carries a user score of 68 from four ratings, with the longest listener note calling it fun and crediting it for mixing post-hardcore and R&B without settling into one register. That mix is the whole proposition and also the recurring friction. His own promotional copy describes theatrical and show-tune instincts set against post-hardcore, and concedes that the genre's audience has given him a mixed reception. The self-description he leads with — "I ain't nothin but a jazz hound baby" — reads as a pre-emptive answer to anyone expecting screaming.
Standing in October 2026
The touring numbers show a career that stalled and then restarted. Songkick logs seven Andrés shows in 2025 against 27 in 2024, and 18 upcoming as of October 2026 with around 12,500 users tracking him for alerts. His most-played cities are Los Angeles, New York, London, Detroit and Paris, and his most frequent co-headliners are Strawberry Girls, with whom he has shared 34 bills, then Night Verses and Eidola. The Strawberry Girls relationship goes back years: they put him on a 31-date US headline tour announced in February 2020, and he sings on their track "Party Nights".
The Purgatoryland Tour ran through May and June 2026 with In Angles and Resilia opening, and sold out at least some rooms — the 3 June date at Jammin' Java in Vienna, Virginia, went clean. The autumn run pairs him with Strawberry Girls again: 29 October at The Venice West in Venice, California, 2 November at Bad Astronaut in Houston, 6 November at The Boombox in Miami, 10 November at The Canal Club in Richmond, 11 November at The Wood Shop in Brooklyn and 22 November at the Marquis Theater in Denver. Only the Miami and Denver dates appear on Live Nation's artist page, through TicketWeb and Ticketmaster respectively; the rest sit with independent venues and local promoters.
Eleven songs, Puzzle first
Fan-logged setlists — 58 documented performances in total — put the current show at 10 or 11 songs and 50 to 70 minutes, which is a support-length set he plays as a headline one. It opens with "Puzzle" almost every night. The Houston show on 23 May 2026 ran Puzzle, "The One Who Stayed Away", "Mr. Meantime", "My Future Ex Wife", "Colossal Titan", "Casual Bender", "A Nice Soft Painless Lie", "Homie Hopper", "Salty", "3 Maeves" and "Darth Binks" — a set drawn mostly from the new record, with "My Future Ex Wife" the most-played song across the logged shows and "Darth Binks" appearing in nine of them, usually at the end.
The rooms are small and the format is unfussy: all-ages bookings, doors around 6.30pm and music by 7.30pm, two support acts, no production to speak of beyond lights and a band. What carries it is the performance register he picked up from music videos as a child and has since pushed towards musical theatre, which is also why the heavier half of the audience does not always take to him. Nobody reviewing the 2026 run in print has said otherwise, because almost nobody has reviewed it; the evidence is the sold-out nights and the repeat bookings alongside the same three or four bands.
The show, now
The show runs 50 to 70 minutes across 10 or 11 songs, opening with "Puzzle" nearly every night and leaning heavily on Purgatoryland: the 23 May 2026 Houston set went Puzzle, "The One Who Stayed Away", "Mr. Meantime", "My Future Ex Wife", "Colossal Titan", "Casual Bender", "A Nice Soft Painless Lie", "Homie Hopper", "Salty", "3 Maeves" and "Darth Binks". "My Future Ex Wife" is the most-played song across the 58 logged performances and "Darth Binks" usually closes. Venues are 200- to 500-capacity rock clubs, often all-ages with doors at 6.30pm and music from 7.30pm; the spring run carried In Angles and Resilia as support and sold out Jammin' Java in Vienna, Virginia on 3 June 2026, while the autumn dates from 29 October to 22 November are shared with Strawberry Girls. Staging is minimal — band, lights, no spectacle — with the theatrical, show-tune delivery doing the work, which listeners either enjoy for refusing to sit in one genre or find out of place on a heavy bill; his own promotional copy admits the reception from post-hardcore crowds has been mixed.
Researched from livenation.com · songkick.com · setlist.fm · unionstagepresents.com · metalcorenerds.com · fchornetmedia.com · music.apple.com · albumoftheyear.org
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