God bless the youth. While our yesteryear pop punk bands are
complacent with 10-year anniversary tours, Neck Deep from Welsh has grabbed the
torch and hit the ground running. Their latest second album Life’s Not out to Get You is a gem that every pop punk lover,
young and old, should enjoy. Songs like “Gold Steps” and “Lime St” are full of
head-bobbin’ guitars and singer Ben Barlow pours his heart out on the album,
with lyrics that will be strewn across Instagram and Tumblr for years to come.
It’s not as if Neck Deep is reinventing the wheel here, they
stick to the tried-and-proven song structure with breakdowns and fast drumming.
It’s just that they do it so well. It’s as if they borrowed elements from
beloved bands to create their own masterpiece. Hard not to hear New Found Glory
in the bridge of “Can’t Kick Up the Roots”, or Travis Barker’s influence on
drummer Dani Washington’s extravagant style (the opening bass riff on “Rock
Bottom” also sounds like a popular Blink 182 song). With the guidance of Jeremy McKinnon from A
Day to Remember, they have perfectly melded the catchy melodic choruses of pop with
the
The pace of Life’s Not
out to Get You is another key to its greatness. Mixing in darker songs like
“Serpents” or the slower jam “I Hope this Comes Back to Haunt You” show they
don’t just write songs to mosh around to. But their experimentation sometimes
comes back to haunt them, such as in “Citizens of Earth” a terrible post-punk
song that unfortunately opens this stellar album. Luckily songs like the
acoustic singalong “December” make that one slight easy to overlook.
There’s a reason bands that were popular a decade ago can
still tour just playing their old stuff, because there’s not much else good
that has come out since then. We had some drought years when the most exciting
news was reunions of bands that should have remained on the benches. Sure we
got The Story So Far but they have hit their stride and The Wonder Years
bordered emo more than pop punk. But finally the gods have smiled upon us and
bestowed Neck Deep for us to relive our past and dream of a pop punk revival.
4 out of 5 stars.
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