The last couple of years have proven to be a great time to be into pop-punk; if you can put aside the laughable hand-wringing from earnest dudes in checked shirts about what does and doesn’t constitute the genre’s values and attitudes (come on guys – we’re talking about four chords and songs about girls, not some kind of revolutionary political movement) and its inexplicable but apparently inextricable connection to pizza, the music itself has been fantastic.
Scene stalwarts like New Found Glory and Alkaline Trio have put out some of the best music of their careers, while relative newcomers like The Story So Far and The Wonder Years have come out swinging (sorry) with instant classics like ‘Under Soil & Dirt’ and ‘The Greatest Generation’. Meanwhile independent labels like Hopeless and Pure Noise are transforming into the modern equivalent of once-holy banger factories like Drive-Thru and Victory Records.
Now, two years after their promising-but-flawed 2013 ‘Nothing & Everything’ EP, SoCal’s Seasons Change are staking their claim for a place at the rapidly-crowding table that literally nobody is calling The New Wave Of American Pop-Punk. With a band name we think it’s safe to assume is taken from Fall Out Boy’s ‘The Take Over, The Break’s Over’ and a title like ‘Please Don’t Leave’ this album probably couldn’t exist in any other genre and with its April release date that band name suddenly becomes all the more apt as Seasons Change clearly have one eye on those ‘album of the Summer’ accolades. The other eye is almost certainly crying over a girl.
Gone are the screamo-esque backing vocals and rough edges of ‘Nothing & Everything’, buffed out by contemporary pop-punk specialist Sam Pura; it’s Pura – who we can only assume has a policy of working with bands whose names alliterate with his – whose phonic footprints have previously graced releases by The Story So Far and State Champs, and it shows. Even the best tracks here – in particular opener ‘Clueless’ and ‘Sick of It’, with its sustained guitars and driving bass line- could have been lifted from either of those bands’ back catalogues but for Anthony Robles’ vocals, which are exactly what you’d end up with if Innocent Smoothies scrapped the mangoes and instead filled their blenders with Jordan Pundik and Tom Delonge.
Seasons Change are a young band, though, and this is a far better début album than many of their peers have managed. It’s easy to make lazy comparisons to what’s come before (c.f. that previous paragraph) but that’s partly a sign of just how spoiled we are for great bands operating in this area.
Overall, the 11 tracks on ‘Please Don’t Leave’ don’t carve out a strong enough identity for this to truly break Seasons Change but neither do they outstay their welcome. If you enjoy energetic, passionate pop-punk then the aforementioned ‘Clueless’ is an absolute belter and ‘Feel It’, with its chugging guitars and grooving chorus, hint at a more mature sound which we can only hope will develop as time goes on. Far from perfect, but well worth half an hour of your time.
ROB BARBOUR