Album review: New Found Glory: 'Not Without A Fight'

NEW FOUND GLORY: 'Not Without A Fight' (Epitaph)

It must be hard to be in a pop punk band; to be entrenched in a genre that allows so little scope for natural progression. Oh sure, you might find that, over time, your lyrics become less preoccupied with the girl who works behind the counter at your local record store and more concerned with little things like the meaninglessness of life and the pointlessness of existence (or, if your name's Billie Joe Armstrong, POLITICAL ISSUES MAAAAAN), but unfortunately, your genre of choice just won't let your music scream anything other than "look at me, look at me! See how simple, catchy and down right irritating my melodies and power chords are!" Yes folks, pop punk is one of the world's most straightforward musical styles and, to be honest, therein lies its charm. Problem is, when you've been in a band for over ten years and you've started growing facial hair and getting mortgages, its monochromatic palate starts to feel a little restrictive.

So what are your options? Well, you can do a complete swerve and abandon the D chords in favour of something different, but then you risk alienating your loyal, perpetually eighteen-year-old, audience (Brand New, we're looking at you... but of course, we love you for it.) Or, if you're New Found Glory, you can suck it up and pretend that change has passed you by, that you're stuck in a state of suspended animation, forever young, whiny and strung up on love; after all, why take the risk of doing something more representative of your current lives when you've got a formula that sells out amphitheatres all across America and gets you slots on Jay Leno (probably)? (Actually, they tried that a bit with 2006's 'Coming Home'... well,they slowed things down a little on, like, four tracks.)

So sixth album 'Not Without A Fight' is pretty much just more of the same: twelve tales of heartbreak and unrequited love set to a resolutely familiar and gloriously unoriginal verse-chorus/play chord, strum strings formula. So, we have forlorn song titles like 'I'll Never Love Again', 'Such A Mess', 'This Isn't You', 'Don't Let This Be The End' and 'Truck Stop Blues' (to name but a few), as well as a few galvanising numbers designed to emphasise the importance of your homies and their fastidiousness; the oh-so-subtle 'Listen To Your Friends' and, even better, 'Don't Let Her Pull You Down' spring to mind here. It's all completely ludicrous, utterly simplistic stuff and hell, NFG know it: the opening track's called 'Right Where We Left Off', for God's sake. Chad and co. aren't afraid to wear their shamelessly formulaic hearts on their sleeves and, in the end, that's why the album works. Unlike their younger, more trend conscious contemporaries, New Found Glory make no claim to be anything other than what they are, and thus they are about a million times more genuine (you get the feeling that a band like Youmeatsix would happily play skiffle music if their record label said it was popular.) Sure, the record probably isn't going to change lives and it certainly isn't going to stand alongside the all time greats, no matter how much producer Mark Hoppus might think it's a work of colossal artistic integrity - fine, so the guitars are a bit heavier and the vocals have more grit... it's still not bloody 'OK Computer'! - but as an example of how to marry the thrilling backbone of punk rock to the melodic sensibilities of pop, it's about as good as you can get. So just like all those other New Found Glory albums then... (7/10)