Get A Little "Louder Now"

Taking Back Sunday is a punk pop band formed in Long Island, New York in 1999. Their most well-known and bestselling album thus far has been their third, titled Louder Now, released in 2006. 

When I first looked into the album, I was intrigued by the uninhibited yelling and addictive electric guitars. It was always fun to watch the sound bars lick the top of their range as the guitars kept breathlessly punching along to vocals laced with passionate frustration over heartbreak.

When I first broke through the plastic wrapping, rather than going in the order of songs that the band had set out, I selected the third track first, “MakeDamnSure,” the lead single whose music video kept me flipping back to time and again to see if it had reached number one status for the week.

Then I went back to the first track and continued in sequential order, finding even more songs that were just as simultaneously fun and mournful. And when the last track ended, I went back to the first and listened to the whole thing all over again. And again. And again.

Popping it back in after all these years, the first thing I noticed was that, once again, my head was bobbing up and down at various speeds and intensities, from a hammer wielded by a frustrated birdhouse constructor to a nitrous powered jackhammer. But I wouldn’t call the pacing relentlessly, exactly. A good three quarters of the songs that come out of the gate sprinting and snarling pause with about a minute left to let the vocalist, Adam Lazzara, calm down and be a little more reasonable in his treatment of your eardrums before exploding back with an even greater passion than before. 

And after all these years, I actually made sure to pay attention to those quieter bits, along with the mellower piece serving as a kind of intermission, “Divine Intervention.” It still doesn’t come off as a thinker’s album, as the topic remains the same as the other eighty percent of the work – stubborn resentment contrasted interspersed with regretful pleading – but the relative tranquility can be a refreshing breather from jumping up and down during the remainder. 

Unfortunately, this time I also began to notice more than a little repetition; I actually took some time to go back over a few tracks to make sure a leitmotif hadn’t been attempted.  It never seemed like a concept album, as each of the tracks can stand by themselves just fine, but with all of them grouped together, the room began to feel a little crowded. 

A couple definitely could have been scrapped, and the result would have been identical.  With a now better attuned ear, I found myself unable to ignore the fact that there really isn’t a whole lot of range in either Lazarra’s singing or Fred Mascherino and Eddie Reyes’ guitars.  They punch and they pound, with the switch to a quieter acoustic on “Divine Intervrntion,” but like Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” series, there are only so many realizations of an idea that are taken. 

The album’s title is certainly appropriate, as it sounds even better with the volume control cranked to maximum, so as I skip around to a few of the screams and whiplash inducing guitars, I’ll watch those volume bars reach their full potential as I play the songs again, except even Louder Now.