Context – driving home from the suburbs

Shout out to Tucker and Dale vs Evil for being my new favorite movie.  It’s the silliest shit I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen Strange Wilderness at least 5 times in my life.  Get on that shit if you haven’t already.

I’m sad to say that New Found Glory has me feeling old these days.  When I saw Makes Me Sick in my new release feed on Spotify I got all kinds of giddy, eager to revisit one of my favorite bands from high school.  I’ve been on the New Found Glory hype train since like 2001.  I remember feeling like Sticks and Stones was the beginning of the end as they lost some of their pop-punk edge in favor of some main stream success.  I remember being pleasantly surprised at how much I still like Catalyst and Coming Home.  I’ve seen these guys at a handful of Warped Tours.  Me and New Found Glory go way back.

So when I put on Makes Me Sick I was initially pleasantly surprised by how much of their pop-punk sensibilities the band has managed to hold onto all these years later.  Jordan Pundick’s voice sounds a little off from how I remember it, but otherwise these guys have stayed on message.  I let nostalgia take hold of me for a few songs before I got bored.

If you want to measure the growth or change in your taste in music, throw on Makes Me Sick.  If you still love pop-punk this is a solid pop-punk album, although they sit in the pop pocket rather than push the punk aesthetic.  That combined with the change in Jordan’s voice and the addition of the occasional synth line and you have a New Found Glory album doing its best Motion City Soundtrack impression.  Which is a thing a lot of people will be into.

But I found myself wanting something more–more passion, more urgency, more energy, more something.  I still think of myself as a pop-punk kid at heart, but when I listen to new pop-punk I’m apparently not all that into it anymore.

May the fond memories resurface every time “My Friends Over You” or “Nothing Gold Can Stay” comes on at a party, but I will probably let them stay in that lane for a while.