|
 |
New Found Glory
Not Without a Fight
Review By Emily Zemler
It’s impossible to mistake a New Found Glory song for anything else — even a track made by one of its many enthusiastic imitators. Maybe it’s singer Jordan Pundik’s nasally vocals, maybe it’s the band’s resistance to using more than three guitar chords in any particular song or maybe it’s just because the Florida fivesome has been around for so long that it’s essentially branded itself. Not Without a Fight, the band’s fifth album, hits shelves almost 10 years after its rough, under-produced debut, Nothing Gold Can Stay.
A lot has happened to New Found Glory in the interim: it signed with Geffen, it was introduced to the art of overproduction, it came face to face with the fact that it’s hard to make the exact same music for a decade and keep all your fans. It’s clear on this album, which just sounds like another collection of New Found Glory songs, the band ignored that impulse. Produced by Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, who thankfully doesn’t polish the tracks beyond recognition, Not Without a Fight makes an attempt at revisiting the band’s work on early albums. But the fact is that New Found Glory never changes or evolves. They may change labels, change producers, change girlfriends, but the music always sounds exactly the same. On one hand, consistency is comforting, but on the other, how much longer they can keep circling?
|
