Flashback Review: New Found Glory - Sticks and Stones

An album that just recently celebrated its 10th anniversary the other day, New Found Glory's sophomore album "Sticks and Stones" was a remarkabale achievement for the band and was the effort responsible for taking the Coral Springs, FL bred group to a new audience and help transcend them beyond the plethora of pop-punk bands permeating the scene throughout the early 00's.

The album opens up with a bang on "Understatement", an old-school, standard issue pop-punk gem that reintroduces you to lead singer Jordan Pundik and his dynamic vocals infusing the song with vivacious energy and melodic blasts left and right that will have you grooving along from the moment you hit 'Play'. My favorite track off the album and my favorite NFG song is "My Friends Over You", an insanely catchy and melodic delight that I will always look back fondly on and remember with such pleasure and enjoyment from the time that I first saw the video for this on MTV and just remembering how much fun the band was having while making this video and how accurately it reflected their diverse personalities and brought everyone together to join in on the action. "Something I Call Personality" is another uptempo number that keeps up with the melodic energy presented in the preceding songs and features excellent drumwork from Cyrus Bolooki and exquisite guitar work from Chad Gilbert and Steve Klein, and bassist Ian Grushka, who each have unique personalities that allow each audience member to identify and appreciate the individual talents that form the core of the group. "Head On Collision" brings the energy down just a wee notch but still poses a formidable presence in the collective group of well composed songs presented here in full force.

The disc's second half gets underway with "Forget My Name", a track that is classic NFG at its finest with dynamic pop-punk rhythms present at every corner and Jordan's vocals breathing a great deal of energy and tenacity to a well represented track at its core that defines their essence as one of the pioneers of the genre. "Never Give Up" moves at a fast pace from the moment it begins and never lets up until the song concludes, an old-school sounding punk track that gets its point across at just over 3 minutes. The disc starts to conclude on "Singled Out" a high energy, bombastic pop-punk blast that shows everyone pouring their heart and soul into a outstanding and thumping track that shows how dedicated the band is to their craft. "Belated" is the track that does the honor of closing the disc out with the energy brought down a couple notches for the group to conserve their energy and present to us a brief synopsis of all the different sounds that we've encountered in our journey up until this point and how each song represents different facets of the band's personality and how well they speak to the listening audience. Drive Thru Records in the late 90's and into the early and mid 00's was the label that represented the collective spirit of the youth that were in high school, including myself. Every album released on that label was a huge event and every band had immense and natural talent that really identified and connected with their audience because they were close enough in age and loved and appreciated music so much that it became a natural part of their everyday lives. If you asked me who my 3 favorite bands from the Drive Thru Records roster were, New Found Glory would be right up there along with The Starting Line and Something Corporate as each band represented a different sound from each part of the country with The Starting Line representing Philadelphia on the East Coast, Something Corporate representing the West Coast from California, and New Found Glory leading the South from Florida. Each band represented a different cross section of American youth but yet all had one thing in common: the bond of music to draw them both together and unify as one.

All in all, an outstanding effort from New Found Glory, who represent the heart and soul of pop-punk at its finest and this album was largely responsible for getting them on the next step to success and introduced them to a whole new group of listeners that still remain loyal to the band to this date.

                                                                                                                        Album Score: 4.5/5

Track Listing:

1. Understatement
2. My Friends Over You
3. Sonny
4. Something I Call Personality
5. Head On Collison
6. It's Been A Summer
7. Forget My Name
8. Never Give Up
9. The Great Houdini
10. Singled Out
11. Belated