🎸 2025 Music #8

Yellowcard is a band that really represents my teenage years. I really liked Ocean Avenue when I was a teenager, and there was an amazing song on the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack called “Gifts and Curses” which I was fully obsessed over. To the point where I got some friends to re-record it with me in my school’s sound production studio and spent hours fussing over each track.

But when Lights and Sounds came out, I didn’t really get around to listening to it, and then I just forgot about them completely. Until I started hearing about them again this year, and then this new track, ”Better Days”, started showing up in recommendations.

It’s fantastic. Not the Yellowcard of Ocean Avenue, full of teenage angst. But something far more mature. Singing of growing as a person, failed romances, and becoming a parent. I really love this trend of bands maturing and still writing amazing lyrics. The Gaslight Anthem’s History Books was similar. When I was younger I didn’t really listen to lyrics too much, and I often found them a little cringy. I feel like as the bands of my youth are maturing, their lyrics are too, and now the words are hitting as hard as the melodies.

On top of that, it’s produced by Travis Barker, who also plays drums on the record. Travis brings an awesome sound, much like he did for the latest Blink-182 album, both punky and punchy. Throw in guest vocals from Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio and Avril Lavigne, and a 30 minute runtime, and it’s just a perfect album. There’s not one filler track.

It’s hard to pick favourites, but ”Better Days”, ”Love Letters Lost”, ”You Broke Me Too”, “Bedroom Posters”, and ”Big Blue Eyes”, are all songs that have either got melodies that get stuck in my head or got me thinking. That’s half the album.

I loved Jason Tate’s piece about the recent spate of our favourite old bands bringing out great new records in his review of Better Days on Chorus.fm:

And that’s why albums like Better Days matter. They remind us that Yellowcard isn’t just a memory frozen in 2003. They’re a band still capable of greatness. They deserve their flowers now, not just as a nostalgia act, but as proof that creation and connection don’t expire. That we can always face down the voice telling us our better days are behind us. That favorite bands and new albums can still shiver our spines at all stages of life.

Music has a way of bringing out feelings you didn’t even know were there. A melody can put you in a good mood, or bring back a meaningful moment. A lyric hits you and you have to stop and think. That never dies.

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