Review Summary: "You're always in my heart."
It's quite surreal to think that a band can go from practicing in a garage to playing the Video Music Awards in a span of two years, but that's what Yellowcard did. The Jacksonville-based pop punk legends-to-be signed to Capitol Records in April 2002 and began recording their major label debut. The song that became the reason for, among countless other things, this very piece of writing, almost didn't make the album. In March 2003, with only hours to spare until the deadline to finish recording, lead vocalist Ryan Key approached producer Neal Avron with his 11th hour hook:
If I could find you now, things would get better.
Avron interrupted whatever instrumentals were being tracked at the moment, ushered Key into the booth, and Yellowcard got to work on the song that would catapult them into eternity.
Ocean Avenue is so much more than a place "where I used to sit and talk with you." It's so much more than a song and album that would become one of pop punk's most indelibly essential and defining moments. This forty-seven and a half minute midsummer classic is what put Yellowcard on the map and sparked a deep and long-standing bond between the band and the legions of loyal fans they would amass. This is where many of us heard those warm violins, those volcanic guitars, and that frantic and desperate emotion in Ryan Key's voice for the first time.
We've come to know Ryan Key as a bit of an unwavering idealist at heart, but once upon a time, he was a hopeless romantic who couldn't take no for an answer, and was still putting together a semblance of the man he would grow up to be. You get to hear those first steps into the unknown here. This is where Yellowcard lost sight of the shore forever. "Way away, away from here I'll be," Key fittingly belts out on the album's opening stanza. On what still stands today as one of Yellowcard's most blistering compositions, Ryan affirms his eagerness to transcend the humdrum life he's known and start anew. "Letting out the noise inside of me/Every window pain is shattering/Cutting up my words before I speak/This is how it feels to not believe," he emphatically proclaims on that mesmerizing bridge.
On "Breathing", Ryan is courting his escaping muse by pointing out how actively he still feels her presence. "The fan blades on the ceiling spin but the air is never cold/And even though you're next to me, I still feel so alone....I can feel you breathing/And it's keeping me awake," he bemoans. As the track progresses, he laments that he drove her away and might not get her back ("The only love I ever knew, I threw it all away"). Then we reach the iconic title track "Ocean Avenue." This eternal banger is
the reason you're reading this. It's the reason for all that this band and us fans have walked through for twenty years. When you marry a killer pop hook with nostalgic imagery, vibrant guitars, Longineu Parsons' frenetic drumming and Sean Mackin's swelling violins, you get an all-time
classic. It's about so much more than an ex-girlfriend. It can be a period of time in your life. Whatever it is, you long for it, but you'll never be completely apart ("There's a piece of you that's here with me....We'll be together for one more night somewhere, somehow"). There honestly isn't enough that can be said about this track. It's ubiquity may have garnered the band some "one-hit wonder" claims, but it's still a special song.
As the album treks along, Ryan toys with a myriad of insecurities. On "Life of a Salesman", he's pleading for advice from his father. On the 9/11 tribute "Believe", he's paying homage to the brave in uniform who ran into unspeakable chaos to save lives, as well as the innocents who didn't make it out. On "Only One", he's again engaging in unrequited romanticism. "There's just no one like you," he pleas, completely unaware that the future in his heart is just about to start. On the earworm "Inside Out", Ryan starts to realize he deserves better after all ("Maybe I was holding on too tight") and "View from Heaven" was written in honor of his friend Scott Shad, the Inspection 12 drummer who lost his life in a 2001 car crash. On "Miles Apart", Ryan sings with a newfound maturity. He no longer seems bitter about the breakup, he seems thankful and eager to press forward as he tells his flame "I may be leaving but you're always in my heart."
Just when it looks like Ryan has moved on from all the heartache, we reach "One Year, Six Months." For me, personally, it's weird staring down the barrel of this one again. The first time I heard this song, I was 20 years old and I had just been blocked and ghosted by a girl who told me she liked me back, changed her mind and then sic'd her friend on me to tell me the bad news. I still remember how devastated I was. I had courted this girl for months and as soon as she finally confessed that she reciprocated my feelings, she decided she didn't want to try things out. It took me a while to realize I deserve better than that. She didn't even have the decency to tell me to my face. I can only imagine how heightened the emotions were for Ryan when he wrote this. He knew he needed to let her go, but that didn't stop him from pouring his heart out for her one last time. "Falling into memories of you, things we used to do," he intimately cries out, as you can almost hear his hand drawing away from her at last, knowing it can't be undone.
After that emotional denouement, the album closes with the towering "Back Home." Away from Florida, away from family, away from
her is where Ryan finds himself. As he ponders the uncertainty of the road ahead, he brings the imagery to the fore yet again. "I found me alone....I am full of fear", he confesses. There's almost a subtle country influence in the way Mackin's violin whines with emphasis as Ryan encapsulates "another sunny day in Californ-i-a." Everything that's happened is definitely weighing heavy on him ("I always thought I wanted so much more, now I'm not too sure." He continues, "what you love is ripped away, before you get a chance to feel it." That latter line is indicative of my relationship with Yellowcard's music. For the bulk of my time as a fan, they've been broken up. I didn't give them the time of day until they were already gone. Sure, they're back now, but I always felt regretful about that.
Ocean Avenue has the rudimentary production of any 2000s pop punk long player, and at times some boyish vocals that can conjure up thoughts of Simple Plan. But what elevated Yellowcard above their contemporaries is the
humanity in their performances. Nothing ever feels phoned in and there's not a single hackneyed lyric written. This album was written for the hopeless romantic,
by the hopeless romantic. By connecting through mutual hardships, Ryan and company struck a palpable bond with their listeners, and they walked on a journey together, as
partners. There's no artist-consumer dynamic here. You feel like the waters are less tricky to navigate, because you've got a friend there to guide you. That's what Yellowcard has been for me, and what they've been for so many others over the last twenty years. And it all started on this mid-July magnum opus that has not dissipated from my memory, nor will it ever.
Maybe we'll forge-.....no. We will
never forget.
