New Found Glory - Makes Me Sick (2017)
There are some things you can count on to always be there, like, for example, a loving and supportive spouse, unless they're some cheating asshole who cheats on you by going in someone else's asshole/letting someone else in their asshole. I just said "asshole" three times in that sentence and now it doesn't even sound like a word. Anyhow, another thing you can count on to always be there is a brand new New Found Glory album that's full of self-pity and insecurities despite the sunny nature of the music, "Coming Home" excluded. Seriously, these guys apparently can't catch a break when it comes to relationships, and they have HOW MANY studio albums out?! It's fucking weird! That being said, if lyrics about "man, we hate Steve Klein!!" brought "Resurrection" down for you, you can rest assure that there's no painfully-obvious lyrics about him on this album.. At least that I caught. I'm not the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but fuck it, y'know? All I know is that this album is fun, if even for a short amount of time.
The band delivers mostly exactly what you'd expect from them, except that they've introduced significantly more keyboards in some tracks, giving a sorta new-wave feel to some of the songs which works well with Jordan Pundik's voice, especially since it sometimes sounds like they layered it a few times. Hell, if you wanna hear something really odd that they haven't done before, just look towards "The Sound of Two Voices" which has a Hawaiian feel to it that'll make you rush to a local supermarket to buy some coconuts, completely forgetting in your excitement that coconuts fucking suck, and anyone who buys chocolate with coconut flakes on it is insane enough to end up doing some shit to land them on a list at some point in their life. Don't even fucking try to contact me about "oh this is just like pineapple on pizza, grow up" because I'll alert the FBI. The album has a real youthful scream to it that's hard to deny, especially since the album is only ten tracks long, so it's not like it drags on like.. I don't know, "Radiosurgery"?
The main problem with this album is that despite the youthful energy of the tracks ("Party On Apocalypse" has to be one of their catchiest tracks in YEARS) that would normally have you saying "man, this band hasn't aged" in a positive way, the lyrics occasionally come across as "pop-punk dad yells at cloud" because there are lyrics on here bitching about teenagers today following a YOLO (I haven't heard anyone say that in almost five years) way of life, taking selfies, and posting pictures of the sky with captions (presumably on Instagram), you'd almost expect vocalist Jordan Pundik to say "pull up your fucking pants" at some point, and this level of "man, kids these days.." is delusional because these kids in question aren't doing anything wrong, really, and happen to be New Found Glory's primary audience. When you're an artist and bitch about millennials, you have to ask yourself "are they the people throwing money at me?" and realize how fuckin' stupid it is to go at them in a way that implies that they're delusional enough to kill themselves to follow the newest and hottest trends. I totally get that teenagers are kinda delusional (believe it or not, I was a teenager) but come on, dude.
Your enjoyment of this album comes down to how much you like New Found Glory and how easily you're able to dismiss the occasional lyric that sounds like something your dad would bitch about on Facebook, much to your and even your mom's embarrassment, but as it stands on a purely musical level, it isn't -great- and isn't likely to win over anyone who disliked them before, but this is the freshest the band has sounded in years, with a lot of these songs sounding like they're just begging to be played out on tour to a crowd of sweaty pop-punk defenders baking in 100+ degree weather, ecstatic to see pop-punk's most durable and arguably happiest-sounding band that wears its commonly-held insecurities on its sleeve full of hardcore punk patches from younger days. Throw it on, don't think too much about it, and drive to the beach with friends. You know you wanna. I know I would.. If only I had friends. Ah, fuck, here my hand goes to turn on "Catalyst". Goddamn you, New Found Glory! Goddamn you and OUR insecurities!!
7/10
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