Review Summary: stan waterparks
Some bands you either love or hate with a passion:
Waterparks fits firmly into this category, with some enjoying their catchy, mindless pop punk, and others wishing they would just break up and never return; there isn't really any middle ground save for the incredibly small minority who just say "meh" and move on.
Fandom is a bit of an odd one. It's got the catchiness nailed down well, and it remains pretty decent for much of it's runtime, but it also has it's share of glaringly obvious problems.
After intro track "Cherry Red" does absolutely nothing, "Watch What Happens Next" kicks off the album for real with the same catchy, energetic pop punk that the band's been cranking out all these years, making the lyrical moral of "fans shouldn't expect artists to keep the same sound" all too ironic as the song (and following album) shows that their sound has barely evolved. The fan expectations rant continues with the forgettable "Dream Boy", while "Easy To Hate" gets some consistency going for all of about 3 songs before "Group Chat" displays their complete and total ineptness at writing joke songs. Thankfully, that experiment ends quickly and the following songs display the band's strengths more: while "Turbulent" features some rather surprising
drum and bass influence, the rest are just catchy, dumb fun. "I Felt Younger When We Met" ends
Fandom surprisingly well, with a noticeable dial back on some lyrical obsessions.
Lyrical "obsessions"? They quite frankly are obsessions, and that's one of
Fandom's biggest flaws; while the lyrics in general are mind-numbingly lazy (or just downright bad), Awsten Knight seemingly can't stop himself from saying "f**k" every 5 seconds like a toddler who heard it drop from their parents' mouths and is now mindlessly repeating it until they're warned by their parents to stop, and while other swears dominate the album, the F word is the most glaringly obvious obsession:
You don't love me the same
It's such a f**king shame
I don't deserve as much
As all your pop faves
You wanna hear my art
But only on your terms
So learn these f**king words
-"Watch What Happens Next"
So delete us from your phone and never look back
F**k you and your friends and LA, you know I mean that
I, I, I
Think you're the worst of them, think you're the worst
So delete us from your phone and never look back
F**k you and your friends and LA, you know I mean that
I, I, I
Think you're the worst of them, think you're the worst of them all
-"Worst"
So I'll call Jawn and Zakk and Travis
Let's go do some bad s**t (What the f**k are you talking about?)
Do we even do bad s**t? (In my paradise)
-"War Crimes"
Knight and Geoff Wigington's guitar work, Otto Wood's drumming and Zakk Cervini's production are all mostly standard fare, although the bass gets a welcome increase in attention on Cervini's part this time around.
Fandom shows blips of hope in the sea of decency; they show every so often that they're capble of making interesting improvements to their sound, and for an album so focused on telling people to expect artists to evolve their sound
Fandom barely does any of that. But if you want some mindless pop punk to dance around and have some fun with, or if you're simply a Waterparks fan, this album will satisfy.
