Reviews

As one would do in high school or college, New Found Glory has grown from being a freshman band, opening up for acts such as Less Than Jake. Now these guys have put together their junior album that truly shows a lot of growth since "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "S/T". Besides the lyrics being a little more grown up, it seems like a lot more time and energy was put into "Sticks and Stones" involving guest appearances by some familiar artists. I honestly didn't think too highly of the band with their last release or with "Nothing Gold", but I have a lot more respect for the guys now. The band pops into the first track "Understatement" with back-up vocals by Toby Morse and Rusty Pistachio of H2O. Even though "My Friends Over You" is the hit single and will turn the heads
of all those teeny poppers in the school cafeteria, it still has quality to it and even though poppy, it avoids the label of lame. The deepest song lyrically on the album is the song "Sonny" which not suprisingly focuses on lonliness, but the band approaches it in a less sappy way than would be expected. The whole band then gets into the vocal act with "Something I Call Personality" which features everyone's least favorite "punk" on bass Mark Hoppus. Also, if you hear some familiar back-up vocals they are of Chris Georggin, Bane, and What Feeds The Fire. The band hasn't totally gone off on a new tangent as some bands have been willing to do, but they have definately worked with the talent they always had to become a tighter band with a promising feature. "Sticks and Stones" even has a treat for you Alkaline Trio fans, with Matt and Dan doing back-ups on "Forget My Name". For those of you who avoided NFG's previous releases, I think this one at least deserves the time of day. It features more variety, a cool makeout scene on the cd cover, and twelve rockin tracks for you pop-punk (and maybe even some punk rock) fans.