Review Summary: yay?
Isn’t the pace at which pop punk bands from the mid-2010s are turning into legacy acts a little scary? Sure, I might be projecting/refusing to accept that I was sixteen almost a full decade ago/attempting to find excuses to enjoy the most juvenile genre almost a full decade later, but
Neck Deep doesn’t lie. While the Welsh outfit’s self-titled record isn’t
bad, it mostly feels like a nice little throwback effort to tide everyone over before the inevitable endless string of anniversary tours starting next year.
Admittedly, it makes sense for Neck Deep to return to mildly fun, mindless pop punk: they have always been most proficient at taking genre tropes and injecting them with the energy their contemporaries lacked. Moreover, hardly anyone seemed to enjoy
All Distortions…’ foray into riffless ‘90s radio rock paired with horrendously quirky lyrics. Much like the year it was released, this album just wasn’t a good time, but at the very least it did present a way forward for the band: something different, something to work towards (ambition?!). Unfortunately,
Neck Deep fails to capitalise on this and exclusively retains that doomed album’s disappointingly unmemorable instrumentation. This brand new collection of songs might be the most
energetic the band have sounded in, uh, almost a decade, but you’d be hard pressed to distinguish one riff from the other - let alone remember one once the album is over. To make matters worse, every song here is formulaic capital F: save for the mid-tempo rocker “It Won’t Be Like This Forever”,
Neck Deep is a fast-paced verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus affair with no space to breathe. As a result, everything feels interchangeable, and there is little reason to listen to this album as an
album: it truly is just a bunch of same-y pop punk tracks stacked on top of each other in a trench coat to pose as an album…
…and yet, I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t feel good to hear Ben Barlow yelling about heartbreak, desperation, and (naturally) why monarchy sucks over some energetic music again. “Can’t Kick Up The Roots” and “Kali Ma” ruled my 2015, so it’s quite nice having some new stuff that approximates the
vibes of these cuts - I’m not entirely immune to nostalgia either, believe it or not. Besides this, most of
Neck Deep makes for fun summer-playlist additions: sure, every song sounds the same, but every song is perfectly enjoyable as a standalone three-minute experience. “Heartbreak Of The Century”s chorus is undeniably catchy; “We Need More Bricks” is an absolute ripper as a whole; “Sort Yourself Out” features some genuinely funny lyrics - unfortunately, all of these highlights are diminished by the context of
Neck Deep. It’s a pity, it’s a shame, but Neck Deep clearly don’t need another great record: I’ll be at that
Life’s Not Out To Get You anniversary show, and I won’t mind hearing some of these new songs as padding for the show. Pop punk lives on, and perhaps we should thank nostalgia and diminishing attention spans for that. Yay?
