Review Summary: Taking Back Sunday take back what should have been theirs all along.
For years now, Taking Back Sunday has been adrift in a sea of insignificance brought about by constant line-up changes, poor direction, and let’s face it – mediocre effort.
Louder Now had its moments, but like the preceding
Where You Want To Be, it was a noticeable downgrade from the band’s acclaimed debut. Then there was
New Again – a record that had a few standouts, but for the most part, was numbingly generic and showed almost no glimpse of the distinctive personality showcased on
Tell All Your Friends. With 2011’s highly anticipated release, I am pleased to announce that Taking Back Sunday has returned with a vengeance. Not only have they crafted their best album since TAYF, but they also managed to do so without rehashing that album note for note.
Taking Back Sunday actually shares a lot more similarities with
New Again than it does
Tell All Your Friends; it is extremely melodic, lean on the screams, and heavy on the hooks. Sound familiar? It should, but the difference here is the improved chemistry and songwriting that makes for an unequivocally fresh listen instead of a tired one. For the first time in nearly a decade, Taking Back Sunday sounds excited to be making music again – and that is something that translates directly onto this record.
The band’s newfound sense of energy isn’t exerted through searing riffs or coarse screams. On their self-titled fifth LP, that passion is poured straight into the songwriting, which is more memorable and consistently catchy than it has ever been. The lead track, ‘El Paso’, while a clear highlight, is actually misleading in terms of
Taking Back Sunday’s overall sound. It blasts through the speakers in a fashion reminiscent of Brand New’s kickoff track for
Daisy, the raw, detuned , and frenzied ‘Vices.’ In a lot of ways, ‘El Paso’ leads us to believe that
Taking Back Sunday is headed down a similar path. However, the vast majority of the album begs to differ, erring on the “pop” side of pop-punk. It is virtually impossible not to bob your head up and down to the infectious verses of ‘Faith (When I Let You Down)’, or gleefully burst into song during the chorus of ‘Best Place To Be A Mom.’ Perhaps it is the reunion of the band’s classic lineup, or maybe they have just gotten wiser with age - but whereas they used to struggle to come up with gems like these,
Taking Back Sunday is simply overflowing with bombastic choruses and glimmering hooks. That isn’t to say that Taking Back Sunday has gone all in for polish and glitz, however, as the bitter ‘Who Are You Anyway’ and ‘Money (Let It Go)’ maintain the slightly acidic edge we have come to expect from this band. Their tremendous balance in songwriting is just another thing that makes this the most enjoyable and listenable record of Taking Back Sunday’s career.
The quality of the album does drop off slightly in the second half due to a lack of consistency, but even the “lesser tracks” are just
that – they aren’t bad songs, they just lack something that the stronger tracks on the record possess. For instance, ‘It Doesn’t Feel A Thing Like Falling’ and ‘You Got Me’ are a little too generic and predictable, even though they fit in quite well with the flow of the album and the style of the songs. ‘Call Me In The Morning’ may also be a miss in a lot of people’s books, because it is
very cheesy from both an instrumental and lyrical perspective. With that said, it is also one of the hardest songs to forget because the chorus is so damn contagious. The misfires over
Taking Back Sunday’s latter half, whether you consider them major or minor, are made all the more forgivable by ‘This Is All Now’ and ‘Since You’re Gone’ – two tracks that define second half’s emotional tone. ‘This Is All Now’ is unlike any other song on the record, with rapidly ascending momentum in the bridge vocals that erupt into a half-sung/half-screamed chorus worthy of being put alongside Taking Back Sunday’s best. ‘Since You’re Gone’ is equally impressive, with wails of “come back!” that sound so poignantly pathetic that you have no choice but to believe they are sincere. It is this sense of earnestness that permeates all of
Taking Back Sunday, and gives it that youthful feeling that they haven’t exhibited since their earliest days as a band.
As a whole,
Taking Back Sunday proves to us that they can recapture their former glory – and our attention – without creating TAYF pt. II. It is catchy, fun, and endearing. It may not be the most innovative album of our time, but if that is what you came into the album expecting, then you have much more pressing concerns. This is just an excellent pop-punk record from a band that came up with the perfect comeback album exactly when they needed to. It is a long overdue reward for the fans who have waited patiently through shifting lineups and hit-or-miss albums for a record just like this. Taking Back Sunday has never sounded more confident, and they certainly seem to have “taken back” their mojo, their talent, that “x-factor”, or
whatever it was that they’ve been missing. Of course, we are the ones who reap the benefits - and there is more than enough quality material here to satisfy even the most alienated of fans. Dig in, because Taking Back Sunday is back, and they’ve never sounded better.
