You can describe the Taking Back Sunday fandom by imagining a simple Venn diagram: one circle contains fans who only enjoy the Tell All Your Friends version, the other full of fans that prefer the band’s major label output (Louder Now and New Again). And then there’s the small intersection of fans who prefer a little bit of everything from Taking Back Sunday’s vast and diverse discography. You can see why the majority of TBS news threads are littered with hundreds of differing opinions.

The band’s sixth record, however, looks to bring those two sides together. Happiness Is is Taking Back Sunday’s first independent release in almost ten years (via Hopeless Records) and delivers that indie spirit throughout its eleven tracks. That energy is immediately felt on opening single “Flicker, Fade.” Clashing cymbals and soaring guitar chords are the backdrop as Adam Lazzara softly sings, “If you should change your name/I’d love you just the same/and if you’d run away/I’d save your place.” It’s oddly comforting, with its eruptive and incredibly catchy chorus sandwiched with the band’s mastery of soft/loud/soft dynamics. It also re-introduces John Nolan and Mark O’Connell back to the mix. Both musicians seemed lost in the overall recording of Taking Back Sunday, and on “Flicker, Fade,” Nolan delivers his impassioned yells (which buoy the song’s chaotic outro), while O’Connell’s raucous drumming gives the track (and the rest of Happiness Is) its spine.

No one ever thought the five guys who created the scene staple, Tell All Your Friends, would ever reunite. Too much gossip, too much pain, too many bridges burned. It just wasn’t going to happen, and it was just the world Taking Back Sunday fans learned to live in. After the band released the uninspired New Again in 2009, a lot of diehard fans took it as the last straw and started to jump ship for good. Never again would we be fooled into getting excited for a new TBS record – we’ve been burnt for the last time.

Then the (what we thought) impossible happened.

Bridges were rebuilt. Friendships were mended. John Nolan and Shaun Cooper decided to rejoin Adam Lazzara, Eddie Reyes, and Mark O’Connell in Taking Back Sunday, and just like that, we were back. At first it was hard to believe, but hey, if Jay-Z and Nas could bury the hatchet and collaborate on a song, then why not Taking Back Sunday (and more specifically Lazzara and Nolan)? And even though shows sold out quickly and recording updates teased, fans were still apprehensive. Could they recapture that Tell All Your Friends magic? Or would the hype and expectations crush them?

Ahem.

“So sick, so sick of being tired/And oh so tired of being sick/We’re both such magnificent liars/So crush me baby, I’m all ears.”

These are the words that open Tell All Your Friends, the debut full-length album by the Long Island band Taking Back Sunday. Although the band had been together for some three years by the time of the album’s 2002 release, they had undergone numerous lineup changes—including a new lead singer—and had just recently solidified their sound, with Adam Lazzara mainly at the helm vocal-wise, with support from guitarist and founding member John Nolan. The two also shared songwriting and lyric writing duties on the album.

Tell All Your Friends grabs the listener’s attention from the start. The album begins with feedback before Nolan’s ringing guitar riff and Mark O’Connell’s fast-paced, sliding drum line jolt “You Know How I Do” into action. And then, less than fifteen seconds into the song, Lazzara begins singing the lines given at the beginning of this review. “So sick, so sick of being tired…” However, the listener isn’t just hearing vocals Lazzara recorded for some song because it sounds good. When you listen to the songs on Tell All Your Friends, it really is so much more than entertainment. At the risk of sounding cliché, you feel what Lazzara (or Nolan) is feeling.