Album Review: We Are! The New Year - An Amazing Situation

We Are! The New Year is five guys from Pennsylvania that you’re not likely to have heard of, although their take on the ever so popular pop-punk genre is something you will be very, very familiar with. When a band takes this move, choosing to try and creep onto a scene that is so overrun at this moment in time, it’s a risky one, and a point that doesn’t need to be stressed. To name similarities to other bands would seem unnecessary, this defines everything that is standard pop-punk.

The start to this album is what you’d expect, ‘Stuttering’ kicks the album off with some nice guitar tones seeing the two guitarist working really well together. Classically the song is about girl troubles, in this case leading Chad Childers, on lead vocals to stutter, but the chorus is catchy and without doubt will get people singing along. The next two tracks ‘Picture This’ and ‘Amazing Situation’ hold no surprises, and everything seems to sound a little too electronic, especially the drums.

‘California’ breaks things up slightly, with an acoustic intro which is then overlaid with the familiar electric guitar tone, but keeping the acoustic guitar behind the track works well, breaking away from songs that are at risk of moulding together, although Chad’s voice feels quite flat throughout the chorus.

‘From Now Till Never’ delivers another catchy piece of teen pop, the hook of ‘Confessions Of A Spider’, “And then along, came a spider and poisoned him with cleverness” however, leaves you cringing. The lyrics are characteristic of pop-punk, and in We Are! The New Year’s case feel more juvenile than usual. Anyone out of their teens will feel slightly lost within this album, unable to connect with any of its subjects. Although pop-punk isn’t exactly poetry in lyrical form, it’s less about inspiring and more about fun, which this album definitely is.

The album comes to an end in the same vein in started ‘Chemical Run’, ‘I Can’t Believe It Rains Like This’ will no doubt have girls jumping around in their rooms, however ‘2 weeks’, an acoustic love ballad if you dare to call it that, holds a really strong vocal performance and strips the band’s sound down backed with some strings and female vocals that work really well.

Overall this album is exactly what you expect to hear, there are no surprises, although there isn’t a necessarily really bad track. On the other hand if you’re not into your pop-punk you should steer well clear of ‘An Amazing Situation’. The genre seems to be staying on the same level, each new album sticking to the rules of the last. Something definitely needs to change here before a lot of people start losing hope and patience, these guys clearly grew up around it, and were far from re-inventing it.

2.5/5

'An Amazing Situation' by We Are! The New Year is available now

We Are! The New Year on MySpace

Connor O'Brien