I can’t say Resurrection is inappropriately titled. New Found Glory’s eighth studio LP is, ugh, a ~*return to form*~ in just about every way. This always happens when the South Florida now-quartet faces some sort of adversity — they regress toward the mean. Coming Home was creative and about as daring as New Found Glory has ever gotten but it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to, so they wrote Not Without A Fight, the most polar opposite of Coming Home possible while still remaining in the very specifically defined realm of pop-punk inhabited by New Found Glory music. Now, guitarist and lyricist Steve Klein gets kicked out of the band and we get Resurrection, which is nothing more than a confirmation that yes, in fact, New Found Glory is still a band, they still exist, and yes, in fact, they can still write New Found Glory songs. Great!
Not so great is the fact that new-school pop-punk’s forefathers have regressed so far toward their own mean that they’ve essentially parodied themselves. Resurrection is significantly more enjoyable for me when I pretend it’s a band of people I don’t know jokingly writing songs pretending to be New Found Glory. This is now a band whose career is driven almost entirely by nostalgia; they draw crowds consisting of either young pop-punk fans who listen to them because they feel like they’re supposed to, or slightly older people who want to hear the hits and don’t care much for new material. That’s perfectly fine: Taking Back Sunday is currently romping across that same exact career arc, but while TBS is taking it upon themselves to change their sound, New Found Glory is retreating for whatever comes easiest. The songs on Resurrection have already been written by this band dozens of times before.
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