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Review: The Paradox – NSFW

The Paradox - NSFW
Adam Grundy

Welcome to the pop-punk party, The Paradox! The band formed in June 2024, and is rounded out by vocalist/guitarist Eric Dangerfield, bassist Donald Bryant, lead guitarist/vocalist Xelan and drummer PC3. NSFW takes a blend of styles similar to Blink-182, Green Day, and Allister, all with a slick-sounding approach to their pop-punk attack. The Paradox are making an immediate impact on the scene with appearances at the latest iteration of the Vans Warped Tour and will be supporting All Time Low on their upcoming headlining tour of major venues across the U.S. While The Paradox lean heavily into the pop-punk bands they’re clearly influenced by here, NSFW is still a really fun debut from the Atlanta-based band.

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My Life In 35 Songs, Track 27: “Speed Trap Town” by Jason Isbell

My Life in 35 Songs
Craig Manning

“Everybody knows you in a speed trap town.”

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a songwriter.

I have this vivid memory of when I was 6 or 7 years old, getting ready for bedtime and humming melodies to myself, making up my own songs. A little later, it was me and my brother and sister in the basement, trying to be a “band,” even though all we had was an extremely loud drum set, a dinky 41-key keyboard with no amplification, and a homemade guitar built out of 2x4s and fishing line. And then, eventually, it was me in eighth grade, scrawling “lyrics” in my journal.

Despite many attempts, though, songwriting remained, for years, the most elusive skill I ever tried my hand at. It was harder than singing, harder than running, harder than what I was learning in my math or English classes at school. Maybe the problem was that I had nothing to say. Or maybe I was just so immersed in music that every attempt I made to write something of my own just came out sounding like a pale imitation of one of my influences. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that I wrote a song I was legitimately proud of, and I don’t know if that ever would have happened had it not been for Jason Isbell.

Isbell had already had a whirlwind career by the time I caught up with him. He’d gotten his start in 2001, joining the southern rock band Drive-By Truckers for a tour in support of their appropriately titled LP Southern Rock Opera, and then sticking around as a guitar player and occasional songwriter and singer for the next three albums. But I’d never heard a Drive-By Truckers song before, so I had no reason to have heard of Isbell through that channel. He’d also flown under my radar for his first three solo LPs, recorded between 2007 and 2011, which I don’t recall ever hearing or reading a single word about when they were actually current concerns in the music world.

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Review: Your Smith – The Rub

Your Smith - The Rub
Adam Grundy

It’s a bit hard to believe that The Rub is the debut full-length record from Your Smith, since she’s been making music for several years. Alas, the long-awaited full artistic statement from the talented songwriter has arrived. After a series of events (the COVID-19 pandemic, starting a family) that led Caroline to step away from the music scene after her excellent last release, 2019’s Wild Wild Woman EP, The Rub finds Your Smith at her most focused, with a knack for crisp and picturesque songwriting. The Rub was recorded with a band at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, MN, and the record is largely centered around the theme of coming home and re-connecting with the people that make our lives the most worthwhile. The Rub tends to “rub” off on listeners in a great way, and it’s an album that deserves its moment in time.

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Review: Ray and Paul – Fading EP

Ray and Paul - Fading EP
Adam Grundy

An indie band, comprised of the San Francisco-area brothers of Ray and Paul, have released their latest taste of music called Fading. The EP is brimming with the stylistic choices of surfer rock, paired with garage rock, all shimmering under the careful eyes of producer John Goodmanson (Weezer, Pavement), with additional tracks produced by Jarvis Taveniere. “These six songs reflect the past five years of our lives—love, heartbreak, sadness, doubt, confusion, and pain,” the duo of Ray and Paul shared. “They’ve shaped who we are and changed how we see the world and our music. We’re so grateful to finally share this with you and excited for what’s ahead.” With a slick sound that fits well in the same realm as Phantom Planet, Ash and Rooney, Ray and Paul showcase why they’re turning so many heads in 2025 and beyond.

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Review: Motion City Soundtrack – The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World

Adam Grundy

It’s so great to have Motion City Soundtrack back and making music again. Panic Stations was their last taste of music that the band offered, back in 2015, and now after the long hiatus, MCS sounds as refreshed and re-energized than they arguably have ever been. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World feels like the most logical jumping off point from Motion City Soundtrack’s adored 2010 LP of My Dinosaur Life, and front-man Justin Pierre still remains his quirky and captivating self on this 11-song set produced by Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Punchline). “I think that if you look at a lot of our past records, it’s about ‘What’s wrong? What am I not getting right? Why do I feel fucking crazy? Why can’t I figure this out’…and I figured it out,” front-man Justin Pierre admits. “It’s almost like I felt I didn’t have an identity [in the past] and now by working through the hard stuff, I know who I am.” By finding comfort in the past noise and figuring out the person he wants to be moving forward, Justin Pierre and his other four bandmates have crated a record that not only lives up to the band’s legacy, but provides a reinvigorated look at Motion City Soundtrack as a whole.

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Review: Twenty One Pilots – Breach

Adam Grundy

It’s both hard and easy to believe that Twenty One Pilots are at the point in their career where they have now released eight studio albums. The band have been scene mainstays since being signed to Fueled By Ramen records in 2012, and yet many casual fans don’t realize that Twenty One Pilots also released two other LPs in advance of their major label signing. Breach comes storming onto the rock scene brimming with a similar sound to TOP’s arsenal, and the new record is catchy, familiar, and filled with several key thematic callbacks to keep fans engaged. It’s been just over a year since Twenty One Pilots released their seventh studio album, Clancy, and Breach feels more confident, urgent, and moves the needle even further in a positive direction in TOP’s creative approach to blending so many genres in their music. The set was produced by Paul Meany, Mike Elizondo, and the band’s vocalist Tyler Joseph. The set was preceded by three singles in “The Contract,” “Drum Show” and most recently, the sprawling, bass-heavy opener of “City Walls” that was accompanied by a long-form music video of the five minute-plus song. Breach ultimately ends up being one of the most thrilling records, if not the most important album, since Twenty One Pilots first formed in 2009.

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My Life In 35 Songs, Track 26: “Song for the Road” by David Ford

My Life in 35 Songs
Craig Manning

Now I don’t lightly use words like ‘forever,’ but I will love you ‘til the end of today…

Do teenagers today still make mixtapes?

I’m using that term loosely, mind you. I know there can’t be more than a few living souls on the planet who still go through the painstaking steps of cobbling together handmade cassette tape compilations to tell their crushes how they feel. Hell, I can’t even say that I’ve ever made a true mixtape, in that classic analog sense. But I came of age long enough before the streaming era that I still experienced the sensation of trading music in physical formats – usually on burned CDs, though occasionally via USB thumb drives, and sometimes even by way of data DVDs.

Does the mixtape live on in any form today? Is it a Spotify link? A YouTube playlist? A collection of TikTok videos? I ask because “Song for the Road” by David Ford is a classic, all-timer mixtape song, and I wonder if classic, all-timer mixtape songs can even still exist anymore.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of the mixtape. In a lot of ways, this entire series is just an ambitious, life-spanning, 35-song mixtape. It doesn’t hurt that three of my four favorite artists of all time – Butch Walker, Andrew McMahon, and Jimmy Eat World – have all written songs about mixtapes. “You gave me the best mixtape I have” Butch sings in his, before adding “And even all the bad songs ain’t so bad.” “This is my mixed tape for her; it’s like I wrote every note with my own fingers,” goes the punchline of “The Mixed Tape,” the first-ever single from Andrew McMahon’s Jack’s Mannequin project; and in the Jimmy Eat World song, the note is pure regret: “Maybe we could put your tape back on/Rewind until the moment we went wrong.”

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Interview: Foreign Air

Foreign Air
Adam Grundy

This past month I was able to schedule an in-person interview with Foreign Air before they played a headlining show at The Atlantis (venue directly next to the 9:30 Club). In this interview, I asked the band about the writing and recording process of their excellent third album, Such That I May Glow, that recently came out, and how they stay grounded given all the “noise” that’s dominating today’s news cycle. Such That I May Glow is up on all streaming services here.

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Review: Silverstein – Pink Moon

Adam Grundy

When I first got wind of Silverstein deciding to release two albums in 2025, the fan in me was excited to see what the band would cook up during these sessions. The band worked closely together during the recording sessions in Joshua Tree, where they would look at the vastness and emptiness of the desert to put the framework behind the first part, Antibloom. On the second part of this ambitious double album project, Pink Moon resolidifies the fact that Silverstein are doing the whole post-hardcore, emo, and screamo genres a big favor by releasing such dynamic music during this era of the band that surpasses my wildest expectations from their debut in 2003, and is taking a well-deserved victory lap in their 25th year of existence. Pink Moon was first described to me by vocalist Shane Told, as having “a couple songs on the record are really kind of a throwback sort of sound where they could have been on Discovering the Waterfront.” This immediately piqued my interest in the second half of the project as a whole, and when I finally wrapped my ears around it for the first time, it solidified my feeling that Antibloom and Pink Moon are some of the band’s best and most urgent works of art to date.

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Interview: Indecent Behavior

Indecent Behavior
Adam Grundy

This past month, I was able able to schedule a Zoom call with Henrik, the lead vocalist/guitarist of a German pop-punk band called Indecent Behavior. In this interview, we chatted about the band’s forthcoming new LP, Sick, that will be released on September 26th via Long Branch Records. Henrik shared the meaning behind the album title and artwork, plus key lessons the band have learned from touring with punk veterans Zebrahead and Neck Deep.

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Review: The Fray – How To Save A Life

The Fray - How To Save A Life
Adam Grundy

We all know the song by heart by now. “Step one, you say we need to talk / He walks, you say, ‘Sit down, it’s just a talk’ / He smiles politely back at you / You stare politely right on through,” are the lyrics fully ingrained in my head from the debut studio album from The Fray and their break-though single of the same name. How To Save A Life got a bit of an unfair shakedown from critics upon its release nearly 20 years ago today. Some critics went as far as saying the band “lacked originality”, but you have to remember what was going on in the Alt Rock scene at that time. Coldplay had already solidified themselves as major players with their first two records, Radiohead were releasing game-changing records left and right, and The Fray were coming onto the “soft rock” scene budding with promise and starry-eyed vision for their piano-laced music. How To Save A Life has since been certified double platinum by the RIAA, and it also became one of the all-time best-selling digital albums of that decade.

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My Life In 35 Songs, Track 25: “Miles Apart” by The Dangerous Summer

My Life in 35 Songs
Craig Manning

This is where days feel more complete, living here with you.

I was a failure.

That’s what I found myself thinking in late June 2013, two months removed from my college graduation. It turns out that landing a good job right out of school is hard, especially when you graduate in the middle of an epic economic recession. Heck, I didn’t even need it to be a good job: I was sending out dozens of resumes and cover letters a day, and most of the jobs I was applying for sounded like soul-sucking nightmares that would have quickly squeezed my zest for life out of my body like I was a tube of toothpaste. But I was desperate, and I was demoralized, and I was starting to panic, and I would have taken damn near any life preserver thrown my way.

I didn’t want to feel this way (understatement), especially not at the dawn of a new summer (historically, my favorite time of year), and especially not with a brand-new album from my favorite band of the moment (The Dangerous Summer) burning a hole in my laptop’s hard drive. During two of the most consequential summers of my life – 2009, between my high school graduation and my first semester of college; and 2011, when I needed to reboot after a dreadful sophomore year – The Dangerous Summer had been there to provide the soundtrack. Those summers had both proved glorious, and having this band’s music in near-constant rotation was a big part of the reason why. With The Dangerous Summer set to release a new album, called Golden Record, in the summer of 2013, I hoped I’d be all set for another glorious season.

Golden Record wasn’t due out until August 6, but I got my hands on an advance stream around mid-June. The first single, opening track “Catholic Girls,” had blown the roof off my brain when it dropped early that month, and I couldn’t wait to hear what The Dangerous Summer had in store for album number 3. On their first two albums, 2009’s Reach for the Sun and 2011’s War Paint, this pop-punk band from Baltimore had delivered quintessential coming-of-age music, full of romantic yearning, aching nostalgia, twentysomething malaise, and ambitious optimism for the future. Their music was catchy enough to be ideal for windows-down summer drives, but emotional enough to deliver deep, meaningful catharsis when I needed it most. It’s another understatement to say that I hold both of those albums near and dear to my heart.

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Review: Boys Like Girls – The Homecoming (Live From the MGM Music Hall at Fenway Park)

Adam Grundy

The Boston-based pop-punk band, Boys Like Girls, released their first official live album yesterday called The Homecoming (Live From the MGM Music Hall at Fenway Park), and it has just about everything you’d want from a live recording. Hit-filled setlist, check. Stadium-ready anthems from an adoring crowd, check. Surprise cover songs that reflect on the band’s humble beginnings to being major acts today, check. My first spin of the record left me with a big smile on my face as I couldn’t help but think about how far this pop-punk band has come, and re-solidified themselves as major players in the music scene as a whole. The repeat spins of the album reminded me of the magic that happens when a band leans further into that trademark sound that made me fall in love with their music in the first place, and delivers all over a career-spanning collection that is filled with over 30 tracks that clock in just under the two-hour mark, yet breezes by like no time has passed at all. It’s that enjoyable of a live record, and I’m so happy that Boys Like Girls have released this set.

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Review: AJR – What No One’s Thinking

Adam Grundy

Shortly after the release of their excellent fifth studio album, The Maybe Man, the three brothers that make up experimental pop band AJR were dealing with some writer’s block. It’s an understandable feeling for an artist that has quickly pumped out so many noteworthy radio hits over their career. What No One’s Thinking is the result of what came out of these sessions after the band wrapped up their comprehensive and ambitious arena tour in support of their previous LP, and is a nod to AJR’s third EP of What Everyone’s Thinking. The sound that comes through the speakers on this latest effort is a bit of a departure from the slick experimental pop that the band has been come to be known for. Thematically, the EP tackles the topics of loss, fractured relationships, and saying goodbye to those we never thought we’d have to. While it’s great that AJR are trying new things at this stage of their career, it’s hard to not feel like a key element of their brand of music is missing on this EP.

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