Coming Home

by

New Found Glory

Edit

Having never listened to or heard a recognizable song by New Found Glory, I thought that I would try out the "punkers" and see if I liked them. To be honest with you, after hearing the exceptional COMING HOME, I found New Found Glory to be one of my new favorite bands. I love the whiny vocals by the lead vocalist as well as the driving rhythmic guitar lines. Listening to COMING HOME you hear remnants of Blink-182 with multi-layers of vocals and the whole punk/emo feel. Is New Found Glory the second coming? No, but they may be one of the few so proclaimed punk bands keeping that "punk" element alive.

The album opens with the great "Oxygen" which is the first track to exhibit the multi-layer vocals along with driving, dirty-sounding guitar lines. Coupled with the great lead vocals of Jordan Pundik, "Oxygen" is just one of few great tracks on COMING HOME. Even better is the following track "Hold My Hand" which features a driving bass line, and gives off the essence of straight, no furls punk rock. The chorus as well as the pre-chorus are so poppy they are both catchy and makes the listener want to sing along. Unlike Good Charlotte (who have many skeptics), New Found Glory don't feel so poppy where it is more pop than punk, but it is a good mix.

Again the hits keep rolling with the consistent "It's Not Your Fault" and "On My Mind" and only hits the slightest falter with the title track "Coming Home", which is above par to its credit. "Coming Home" features the cliche-commonplace "oh, oh, oh" that have become almost second nature in either punk or emo music. "Make Your Move" features what is usually one of my biggest pep-peeves... overwrought guitars. However, the overproduced sound is desired on this very cool track, one of the first instances where I appreciate that timbre.

"Taken Back By You" isn't a favorite track of mine, but I do like the bridge and break sections here. "To Good To Be" features the great vocal harmonies that tend to string COMING HOME all over, enhancing its pop element. What is different about "To Good To Be" might just be the fact that it isn't nearly as heavy as the majority of other tracks here making its lighter, cleaner sound something that is desired here. "Love And Pain" is about the only miss here, though it is average to its credit. "When I Die" is a very bombastic track with great, lush string orchestration, and very nice choice of chord progression. "Connected" is another above par track, though not necessarily hit material, while the closing "Boulders" is exceptional with great string orchestration, a prominent bass line, and a dynamic ending among other things.

Sure COMING HOME isn't perfect, but it is pretty good and definitely is one of the best punk-emo releases of 2006. This was my first time hearing New Found Glory and if they continue to make great music like this on COMING HOME, then I am sure that I will be purchasing the rest of the albums they release. 4 stars.

There are moments of absolute brilliance and genuinely great songwriting in tracks like "love and pain", "coming home", and "when I die", yet NFG have slowed down their musical style sooo much that it takes some getting used to. For all the past new found glory fans remember tracks like (from catalyst) "I don't wanna know", (from sticks and stones) "the story so far", (from nothing gold can stay) "The goodbye song" and "broken song"....basically songs like these are the ENTIRE album. Most of the songs of this album have a ballad feel to them and the high energy punk-pop is gone which has always been one of the main things to draw me to this particular band. I LOVED seeing them live and jumping till my calfs gave out and there is not song on coming home that does that. This album is much different from previous albums in an obvious way.... NFG used to sing primarily about heartbreak and girls screwing over boys.... now... this is a positive album about love. Not just love of a girl, but love of HOME. In many songs the word "home" is mentioned. IN some songs home is that mythical place we feel comfortable in our hearts, other times "home" refers to the special girl that we can't breathe without. With that said, I find that NFG's lyrics on this album are worth the buy, and much better than any previous effort. HOWEVER , The jumping around punk rock is gone and so is a lot of the fun. So... if your looking for an album to rock to...its not for you....BUT if your looking for an album to put some headphones on and chill this is for you. Not a perfect album, but the change is acceptable. Jordan's voice is a bit less nasaly....just wish we had a few more punk rawk moments...

CD GRADE: B-