Review Summary: Time goes so fast
Take a moment, if you will, and try to recall Yellowcard’s prime. They had their first number one single blasting through radio station speakers everywhere, they were selling out some of their largest venues ever, and were collaborating with like-minded pop-punk legends in a way that only seemed to enhance their ever-growing status within the scene. Looking back, it seems like an entirely different era in the world of music, doesn’t it?
Wrong. Welcome to 2025! That’s right – Yellowcard are actually, somehow, bigger than they ever were. Tickets to their
Ocean Avenue 20th reunion tour sold like hotcakes. The lead single and title track for
Better Days spent nearly a month as the band’s first number one single (a feat that not even “Ocean Avenue” or “Way Away” achieved). Travis Barker joined the band in the studio and performed drums for all ten tracks, then produced the album as well. Nostalgia can be a tricky thing, because it toys with our perceptions. For as much as we tend to look to the past through rose-tinted glasses, sometimes the best moments we will ever experience are happening now, right in front of us. Enter
Better Days.
Yellowcard’s eleventh LP and
official comeback album after nearly a decade away could end up being their most commercially successful release yet. It’s tremendously polished, concisely trimmed, and insanely infectious. It
feels like classic Yellowcard in terms of its energy and emotive lyrics (with just a dash of self-titled
blink-182), but it
sounds entirely modern and fresh – as if it is ushering in an entirely new era because…well, it is. Everything is crisper and smoother than at any point in their prior discography – Ryan Mendez’s guitars are sharp and rousing, Sean Mackin’s violins ring out with total clarity and conveyed emotion, Ryan Key’s vocals are as hook-laden as his lyrics are incisive, and Travis Barker’s absolutely propulsive drumming allows the band to reach any tempo they want at any time. Barker’s pull can also be felt with the inclusion of Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio, blink-182) on ‘Love Letters Lost’ and Avril Lavigne’s powerful chorus on ‘You Broke Me Too’. All in all,
Better Days is a sleek, glistening,
shining pop-punk record which rounds up Yellowcard’s core essence and makes it sound grander than ever.
The album kicks off with ‘Better Days’, a track that combines prominent electric guitar work with an explosive chorus capable of remaining stuck in your head for weeks: “It's not too late to change everything you wanna change…are you happy now?” It’s an empowering message paired with a thought-provoking question, all wrapped in a
Southern Air-styled atmosphere – so it’s not surprising how much it resonated with new and old fans alike on its way to topping the charts. Key also delivers an unexpectedly high vocal inflection during the refrain (for reference, consider the stratospheric heights ‘Only One’ reached) thus lending even more urgency to the moment. ‘Better Days’ is easily one of the most well-rounded, expressive, and wholly representative songs that the band has ever crafted, making it a perfect lead-off for Yellowcard’s triumphant return to the scene. ‘Take What You Want’ is a straightforward but utterly catchy tune that will have you bobbing your head and tapping your toes within seconds of it beginning. Its perky tempo is belied by lyrics of pent-up frustration, painting a picture of someone who brings everything to the table in a relationship but gets nothing in return: “I give all I got, you still ask for more.” Despite the clear toxic imbalance, it’s implied in the final verse that the narrator loves this person enough to continue helping them, “And I'd still give you more.”
That bitterness continues into ‘Love Letters Lost’, which features guest vocals from Matt Skiba and bounces atop choppy, frenetic violin cuts vaguely reminiscent of
Ocean Avenue’s ‘Life of a Salesman’. “You had an empty heart and I was an easy mark” Key sings, telling a tale of being used during a moment of vulnerability: “Love letters lost, and I don't ever wanna find them / 'Cause I'm better off, forgetting you're the one that signed them.” A similar account of heartache and loss can be found on ‘You Broke Me Too’, a power ballad which initially features Ryan Key and Avril Lavigne on separate vocal duties before the two intertwine for a gorgeous moment during the bridge. The track once again laments this idea of being in a vulnerable state and being taken advantage of: “You found me, I was broken / You let a little bit of hope in / But you broke me too.” Key almost sounds haunted by it, at one point penning, “You're not even here, but you still won't let me rest.” Despite its title, much of
Better Days reflects on moments of pain.
‘City of Angels’ and ‘Skin Scraped’ both seemingly deal with Yellowcard itself. Those who know the band’s lore will recall that on 2006’s
Lights and Sounds, Ryan Key wrote a somber ballad called ‘City of Devils’ that conveyed how he felt like an outsider who did not belong under the bright lights of Los Angeles. The song also spoke to broader themes of alienation, but it was clear that Ryan (and perhaps the band by extension) did not necessarily enjoy being launched into stardom and thrust under the Hollywood spotlight at such a young age. By contrast, ‘City of Angels’ is something of a love letter to the town, offering an apology born from wisdom, experience, and context. “City of angels, I need you again / I know that you made me, you know who I am / I came here to find out if I could become / All that I dreamed of when I was young”, Key sings atop sweeping violins and an electronic undercurrent reminiscent of the group’s
Lift a Sail days, eventually adding: “Time goes so fast, gone in a flash / Thought I was numb, getting close to the end / You give me hope, I can feel it again.” A similar sentiment arises from ‘Skin Scraped’, which appears to be about Yellowcard’s breakup and subsequent reunion. Set to a barrage of masterful drumming from Barker and a punchy, addicting chorus, Key sings “I listen now to find a faint heartbeat / How did we survive the fall? How did we revive at all? / Everything is different now, so we gotta fight to stay out / Of prison cells we kept each other in.” The song could be interpreted in many ways of course, but the immediate implication seems to be that the band members now realize what they’ve been missing during these extended hiatuses/breakups – and have finally had enough: “I didn't know we could crash this hard / Wake up from the accident, knowing it's the last of it this time / After all the shit we've been through, I'm never letting go of you again.”
Perhaps the most compelling messages on
Better Days are the ones that see the band looking to the future. ‘honestly i’ – which carries massive ‘The Sound of You and Me’ vibes with its urgent refrain and percussive title wave – touches on the fears associated with fatherhood while also explaining how instinctive it is to overcome all of that when you are placed in charge of another, much smaller, life: “Honestly, I was afraid of this life, and sharing the pieces of me I don't like / Then when I felt your heartbeat next to mine, I never felt so alive”. 'Bedroom Posters' is an anthemic ode to moving on, likening it to leaving your childhood home and taking down the posters you had plastered all over your bedroom wall. On an album brimming with uptempo instrumentation and huge melodic hooks, ‘Bedroom Posters’ may still be the most infectious tune on the entire album. Whether it’s the catchy “Tear down my bedroom posters / Don’t say those days are over” that comprise the standard refrain or the key change and heartfelt pleas of “Tear it all down when I’m gone” within the bridge, there’s so much to sink your ears into here that it practically begs to be spun on repeat.
The best song on the entire album is the penultimate ‘Barely Alive’, a track that is equally about moving on but is absolutely gut wrenching compared to the almost playful ‘Bedroom Posters’. “Maybe it's not my fault, maybe it's not yours / Maybe we're just not those people anymore” Key leads in the opening verse, which feels downtrodden and melancholic, almost like a Jimmy Eat World
Futures moment: “Maybe I don't love you, maybe I'm just bored / Pretty sure we both miss the way it was before.” The song erupts with a burst of drums and a massive guitar riff right as the chorus hits, and with each new verse Key’s lyrics cut deeper: “Silence is deafening and sorry’s just a word.” The song's most powerful and heartbreaking moment comes on yet another incredible Yellowcard bridge, where Ryan sings with a sense of audible pain, “I built this house, but it's not home / I lost myself when I let you go / I'm too young to be this old / Terrified I'm gonna die alone.” The emotionally sweeping moment is further enhanced by a magnificent drum fill from Travis, followed by one of Sean’s most breathtaking violin cuts. It’s Yellowcard firing on all cylinders, and if the lyrical content and delivery isn’t enough to bring a tear to your eye, then hearing the band in their absolute
element – singing and performing their hearts out like it’s 2003 again – ought to do it. I haven’t been moved by a Yellowcard song like this since ‘Fields and Fences’, and I’m still utterly in awe over the sheer emotional magnitude of the moment. It’s earth-shattering.
Better Days becomes more emotive as it progresses, and by its conclusion we’re staring Ryan’s current reality – and many of our own – in the face. ‘Big Blue Eyes’ is an ode to Ryan’s newborn son, written in the form of an old-school acoustic Yellowcard track. The love shines through every verse and every word, as the guitar strings are gracefully plucked and the violins swell up with a sense of rustic nostalgia. Key’s words will resonate with anyone who has had a child and experienced just how much it changes your life in a mere second:
The days feel slower, but the weeks fly by
You make me wish that I could just stop time
I'm letting go of everything I knew
Now nothing else matters, it's all for you
There's life before you, and there's life after
I heard the melody in your laughter
I finally know just what my mother meant
When she told me there's no love like this
If I could put these times inside a jar
Inside my heart, you'd be there, just smiling
Your big blue eyes align the stars inside my heart
I see my whole life in your big blue eyes
When I listen to ‘Big Blue Eyes’, it immediately transports me to a hospital room a few short years ago when a doctor handed me my newborn son, helpless and wrapped in a cloth, with nothing but…well, big blue eyes…staring up at me. It’s a vision forever engraved in my memory as the happiest and most terrifying moment of my entire life. My perception of Yellowcard's discography over the decades has been one of a continuing storyline paralleling the events in my own life. With the launching of
Better Days – a Yellowcard record that was never supposed to happen – this feels less like a new chapter and more like a new book entirely. I'm not the heartbroken teen I was during
Ocean Avenue, or the bright-eyed, newly in-love young adult that I was back when I reviewed
Southern Air. Now, as a married man with young children, my life is no longer just my own. Everything I do is an effort to bring to life a
new story, and within it a series of unique chapters. It feels like a cycle completing itself, and honestly, I can say I've never felt more alive.
