Pop Punk

Illenium – ‘ILLENIUM’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Lindsey Byrnes The fifth full-length album by electronic music producer and DJ Nicholas Daniel Miller – known professionally as Illenium – opens with “Starfall,” an all-synth electronic instrumental. This is hardly the curtain-raiser a listener might expect if they choose to look ahead to the sixteen-song track listing, to see that upcoming cuts… Read more

Nothing, Nowhere – ‘VOID ETERNAL’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Jonathan Weiner No one quite seems to know how to classify the music of Joseph Edward Mulherin – who performs under the moniker of Nothing, Nowhere. Every label from “indie rock” to “emo” to “pop-punk” to “hardcore” has been used to describe the 30-year-old’s music. Such speaks to the increasingly futile nature of… Read more

Carlie Hanson – ‘Wisconsin’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Samantha Harter Ever since 2018’s “Only One,” Wisconsin’s Carlie Hanson has felt like an indie cult star perpetually on the brink of a major breakout – the charms of her evocative, homespun indie-pop and pop-punk immediately obvious. Her sophomore album, which shares a name with her home state, might be too quiet and… Read more

You Me At Six – ‘Truth Decay’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Freddie Stisted Surrey’s You Me At Six enjoyed modest commercial success in their home country during the late 2000s and early 2010s, with five Top 40 singles and two chart-topping albums to their name. If any mid-sized band should be set for a revival of fortunes, it should be this English quartet –… Read more

Pierce The Veil – ‘The Jaws of Life’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Celia Kenyon From the very first moments of their newest album, the now-trio emo rockers Pierce the Veil want you to know this isn’t just another generic pop-punk revival album – an intense swirl of sirens reaches almost deafening heights, suggesting this is going to be an album that has more in common… Read more

Fall Out Boy – ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Pamela Littky Fall Out Boy’s newest album, So Much (For) Stardust, begins with a dramatic, repeating piano line and a luscious arrangement of strings – it sounds like the sort of thing that should kick off some epic, wildly expensive action movie. Then, the song abruptly switches gears into the sort of frenetic… Read more

All Time Low – ‘Tell Me I’m Alive’ Album Review

Photo credit Ashley Osborn If Paramore’s latest album – this year’s This Is Why – demonstrated what it sounds like when a beloved 2000s pop-punk matures tastefully nearly two decades after their debut, All Time Low’s newest offering Tell Me I’m Alive shows what happens when a band from the same time is still clinging… Read more

Paramore – ‘This Is Why’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Zachary Gray The best, most beloved Paramore songs managed to meet listeners where they were and capture their collective feelings like lightning in a bottle. The snarling “Misery Business” captured desire in its most intense, brattiest, most unreasonable, most teenage form, while the lilting “The Only Exception” captured the ecstasy and anxiety of… Read more

MOD SUN – ‘God Save The Teen’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Nathan James Musicians have been writing love songs dedicated to the object of their romantic affection for millennia, but we honestly can’t remember the last time we heard anyone as out-of-their-mind in love as expressed in a song on a particular track from God Save the Teen, the latest album from rock drummer… Read more

Sleeping With Sirens – ‘Complete Collapse’ Album Review

Photo Credit: Ashley Osborn When future music history books cover the current revival of pop-punk and pop-rock, the lion’s share of credit will likely go to artists like Machine Gun Kelly, Olivia Rodrigo, and Willow – all of whom have found surprising chart success with their respective forays into the genre this decade. But perhaps… Read more