pop punk

Record #988: blink-182 – Cheshire Cat (1995)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not sure how it’s taken me this long to add this record to my collection. Back when Enema of the State shockingly wound up on the Top 40, I was a blossoming punk who was a firm adherent that any band’s earlier stuff was always better.

While I’ve since learned I was wrong about that, you can probably understand why Cheshire Cat would have solidified that idea for me. While its decidedly less mature than their pop breakthrough and lacks the technical drumming prowess of Travis Barker, this record nails blink’s juvenile humor, teenage angst, and raw energy in a way that they never quite topped.

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Record #935: Hällregn – Varför Dröjde Du Så Länge? (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When my family and I made our first excursion into Stockholm proper, I stepped off of the train in Old Town and was immediately greeted by a flier advertising a fifty percent off record sale. I wasn’t about to abandon everyone to go record shopping, but the more time we spent in town, the more I saw these fliers popping up.

Finally, our last day in the city, we found ourselves in the neighborhood with the shop. I decided to split off to find this much-advertised sale and meet up with them later. I found the shop, tucked into a cobblestone alley up a steep set of stairs, and set to digging.

This cover art, from a band called HÄLLREGN (pronounced like Hell Rain, meaning torrential downpour) caught my eye. When the shopkeeper offered to play me a sample, I was surprised that despite its dark, foreboding album art and the band name written in what seemed like blood, it sounded like what would have happened if the Go-Gos were punkier, and also Swedish.

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Record #902: Floorbird – Fall Apart Anywhere (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Getting into music as a kid, my journey was flanked by a chorus of older dudes chanting “they don’t make it like they used to.” I brushed it aside as grumpy old man complaining, because of course there’s still great music being made. But in the last few years, I’ve started to see more and more of my own peers joining that old refrain, assigning it to ’00s emo and pop punk instead of classic rock.

But my reaction remains the same. There’s tons of great music being released now, much of it checking off the same boxes of the music they loved as adolescents.

Take for instance Floorbird. They’re a newer act, but if you were to tell someone that they played Warped Tour in 2003, they’d likely believe you. Fall Apart Anywhere was released in 2020, but it pulls off the same sort of hooky blend of emo and pop punk as Dashboard Confessional, The Ataris, and Jimmy Eat World.

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Record #821: The Get Up Kids – Problems (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The seeds of my rediscovery of the Get Up Kids were planted in 2019. I was writing for a music review site, and the site owner messaged me asking if I was ever into the Get Up Kids, because they had a new album coming out and he needed someone to review it. I said that I listened to them a little bit, but wasn’t a superfan. He said, “that’s better than anyone else,” and sent me Problems. 

What greeted me when I listened was a collection of emotional power pop that hit many of the same sweet spots of their classic work.

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Record #819: The Get Up Kids – Something to Write Home About (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Over the years, I have stated publicly and often that I missed the Get Up Kids when I was in the throes of my emo phase. Most publicly, on the first episode of my podcast, which I host with a Get Up Kids superfan.

As a teen, I had a copy of the B-sides and rarities disc Eudora, but really only loved a couple tracks on it. I have a vague memory of buying Something to Write Home About, regarded by many to be their best, but I don’t remember being very enthralled with it.

However, a couple months ago I bought a box of records from a friend that had a number of emo classics, including many from TGUK. “I might as well keep this one,” I said of this disc, before putting it on and realizing something surprising…

I knew every word to this album. 

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Record #721: The All-American Rejects – The All-American Rejects (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In 2002-2003, I was a sixteen-year-old emo kid who discovered all my music through scouring message boards, cross-referencing the thank yous in CD liner notes, or watching hours of Fuse TV. I was ingesting a healthy diet of Thrice, Sunny Day Real Estate, Fugazi, pre-hiatus Weezer, Zao, and the like.

And when the Fuse airwaves started being infested with at three All-American Rejects videos on heavy rotation (was it only three? I could have sworn it was at least five), I had an almost visceral reaction. It was the cheesiest, most cliche, overproduced schlocky pop punk I had ever heard. It was so pop punk it was almost devoid of any punk ethos at all. It felt like the exact embodiment of copycats who heard Dashboard Confessional and learned the exact wrong lesson.

And for years, I endured it angrily.

But after I graduated, I was driving around with a friend and flipping through their CDs when I found this and threw it in as a joke. And to my utter surprise—and the disappointment of my punk cred—I realized that this album totally bangs.

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Record #670: Grey Gordon – Forget I Brought It Up (2014)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I sometimes forget that my friend Grey is more than just a memelord. From his constant online irreverence and roasting of just about every band in existence (see: his podcast Demolisten), it sometimes feels like he doesn’t have a heart at all.

But within a few seconds of his solo full length Forget I Brought It Up, I realize oh yeah, this guy does have feelings—and an incredible talent for communicating them through poignant lyrics and a rich mixture of 90s alternative, pop punk, and emo.

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Record #586: Morrissey – Years of Refusal (2009)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

While the last few years have seen many music fans struggling to reconcile that they people behind their favorite music were terrible people (see especially: Brand New), Morrissey fans have always been painfully aware that he’s a bastard. To most Smiths fans, he’s like our old, drunk uncle who we wish would just shut up.

For the most part, that hasn’t stopped the fandom’s appreciation of his work. There’s been a sort of, “well, you know, he’s just old” attitude toward most of his press antics.

But Years of Refusal, his 2009 tour-de-force, doesn’t sound like the work of an old idiot clinging to his glory days. It’s a fierce and muscular disc that’s just as vigorous as anything he released twenty years earlier.

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Record #531: Mae – The Everglow (2005)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If Destination: Beautiful had convinced detractors that Mae was overly sentimental and pretentious, then The Everglow certainly wasn’t going to change their minds. I mean, it’s a concept album with an accompanying picture book that opens and closes with a narrator explaining itself, for crying out loud.

But for those of us who had bought-in to their first disc, the follow up was a masterful epic that was a definitive work in every sense.

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Record #530: Mae – Destination: Beautiful (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

My sophomore year of high school, I found a great indie/emo band called Sky’s the Limit on Interpunk.com (oh, Interpunk…their website has never been updated, btw). I bought their only release, which was only released on a burned CD-R, and I was spellbound by the intricate guitar work, catchy rhythms, and soaring melodies.

So when I discovered Mae on an old Tooth & Nail compilation, I was attracted to them for many of the same reasons. I bought this album, and was amazed to find a Sky’s the Limit song on it. It was only then that I realized that Dave Elkins was the lead singer and principal songwriter for both of them.

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