Greater than twenty years after their peak, the music of Yellowcard is a pop punk message in a bottle. The notice that washed ashore from a less complicated time describes the picture of a younger, sharply-dressed band filled with aspirations, thrashing on their devices — violin included — within the echoey tomb of an underground parking storage within the music video for “Ocean Avenue” because the refrain kicks into overdrive.
“If I could find you now, things would get better, we could leave this town and run forever, let your waves crash down on me and take me away,” frontman Ryan Key sang ecstatically on the prime of his lungs.
That hit tune, the title monitor of 2003’s “Ocean Avenue,” created a tidal wave of success that modified the course of their profession from struggling artists to a world-touring headliner and darlings of MTV’s Complete Request Dwell.
“The first time it happened, we were really young,” Key stated, gingerly greedy a spoon along with his closely tattooed hand whereas stirring a cup of sizzling tea. “We were quite literally a garage band one minute, and then we were playing on the MTV Video Music Awards and David Letterman and whatever else the next minute.”
It’s a second that hasn’t escaped his reminiscence 22 years later. Now, he and his bandmates — violinist Sean Mackin, bassist Josh Portman and guitarist Ryan Mendez — are removed from the ocean however not too removed from water as they give the impression of being out at a glowing pool from the window from a set on the Yaamava’ Resort and On line casino in Highland. A pair hours from now, the band will play a splashy pool get together gig for 98.7 ALT FM. The set will embrace a raft of all of the outdated hits, together with “Ocean Avenue” in fact, in addition to their first new songs in nearly a decade.
Earlier than the discharge of the primary singles for the brand new album, “Better Days,” it would’ve been straightforward to jot down off their eleventh album as one other launch destined to be overshadowed by their early catalog. Nonetheless, with the correct quantity of inner inspiration and outdoors assist from Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, who produced and performed all of the drums on the album, the outcome was a batch of recent songs that haven’t merely been washed out to sea. Fairly the alternative, really.
Previous to the album’s launch, the title monitor “Better Days” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Different Airplay chart. This achievement got here after a 22-year wait since their first look on the chart with the “Ocean Avenue” single “Way Away.” Key additionally notes that it’s the primary time followers are utilizing the band’s new music for his or her TikTok movies as a substitute of “Ocean Avenue.”
“That’s crazy,” Key stated. “Everyone is using ‘Better Days.’ I don’t think we’re alone in that. I think for bands in our scene, new music is getting a lot of love and a lot of attention again, and it’s amazing to see.”
It’s been about three years for the reason that band reemerged to play a reunion set at RiotFest in Chicago, following their 2017 farewell present on the Home of Blues in Anaheim. On the level they have been able to name it quits, the band was struggling to promote sufficient tickets to their reveals to maintain the dream alive. For Mackin, fatherhood pressured him to additionally think about his household’s monetary stability, prompting him to enter the company workforce as a gross sales rep and finally changing into a service director for Toyota. At one level, he was accountable for managing 120 staff. “I just thought that was going to be what I was going to do to take care of my family for the next 20 years,” Mackin stated.
After Yellowcard’s hiatus, Key continued enjoying music in a number of tasks that distanced themselves from the pop punk sound — together with recording solo work below his full identify William Ryan Key, touring with bassist Portman at his aspect. Key additionally produced a post-rock electronic-heavy challenge referred to as Jedha with Mendez, and the pair additionally does a whole lot of TV and movie scoring work. For a very long time, Key and his bandmates mourned the lack of what that they had with Yellowcard. It was an important factor in Key’s life, although he stated he didn’t understand how a lot the band really formed him till it was over.
Throughout their hiatus, band members took day jobs. One member managed 120 Toyota staff earlier than the 2022 Riot Fest reunion reignited their ardour.
(Joe Brady)
“Ungrateful is not the word to use about how I felt back then. It’s more like I didn’t have the tools to appreciate it, to feel gratitude and really let things happen and and stay in the moment and stay focused. Because I was so young, I was so insecure about my place, my role in all of it,” Key stated.
“We look at him like a general. It was never lost that the best drummer of our generation is playing drums with us,” Mackin stated. “We know him as Travis now, but man, this guy is just oozing talent — he’s doing all these amazing things and he doesn’t seem overrun by it, not distracted one bit. While we were recording, he was right there with us.”
Key says he was initially intimidated singing in entrance of Barker within the studio and had a couple of moments the place destructive, self-conscious ideas have been getting the higher of him within the vocal sales space throughout recording. As an alternative of getting aggravated, he says Barker helped ease his anxiousness with a couple of easy phrases.
“Travis came into the booth, closed the door, put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, ‘You’re gonna do this as many times as you need to do it. I’m gonna be here the whole time.’” Barker was really talking from expertise. He instructed Key on the time that he’d simply recorded 87 tough takes of his components on “Lonely Road,” his hit tune with Jelly Roll and MGK. “That was a real crossroads for me,” Key stated.
The side of the album that feels most akin to “Ocean Avenue” was that Barker by no means actually allowed them to overthink something when it got here to songwriting, a ability the band had unwittingly mastered as youngsters again within the “Ocean Avenue” days by writing songs on the fly within the studio with little time to care about how a tune may find yourself earlier than they recorded it.
“There’s something about the way we did this record with Travis, where we would walk in and did it in a way we haven’t done in 20 plus years with him saying ‘We’re gonna write and record a song today,’” Key stated. “ It was a return to that style of songwriting where you have to kind of get out of your comfort zone and just throw and go.”
The ultimate product strikes swiftly over 10 songs, the monitor listing begins with a flurry of vitality from the bombastic opening drums of “Better Days” that propel a tune on interior reflection on the previous. It strikes on to the high-energy heartbreak of “Love Letters,” that includes Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio. Avril Lavigne lends her hovering vocals to the unrequited love tune “You Broke Me Too.” Songs like “City of Angels” and “Bedroom Posters” monitor episodes in Key’s life the place his band’s hiatus took a destructive toll on his outlook on life but in addition about in search of a method again to rediscovering himself. The album wraps with the acoustic lullaby “Big Blue Eyes,” which Keys wrote as a tribute to his son.
Although the songs on “Better Days” continuously wrestle with self-doubt and uncertainty, the response from followers has been surprisingly supportive, Key stated.
“I cannot recall seeing this level of overwhelming positive feedback. People are just flipping out over these songs,” the frontman stated. “The recording was such a whirlwind. When I listen to it, it’s still kind of like ‘When did I write that song?’ It happened so fast, and we made the record so fast, but I’m glad we just did it.” Regardless of the success, Secret is hesitant to label the band comeback youngsters, “probably because we are officially passed kids label,” he stated.
“Maybe it’s the return of the gentlemen?” Mackin joked.
Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker produced the album, serving to the band recapture the spontaneous vitality that outlined their 2003 breakthrough “Ocean Avenue.”
(Joe Brady)
No matter they name themselves, coming again to the band after so a few years of various experiences has made Yellowcard’s second shot at a profession really feel all of the extra rewarding.
“Because you feel like you know you’re capable of something other than being in this band, capable of connecting with your family in a way that you couldn’t when you were on the road all the time,” Mackin stated. “There’s things that happened in that break that set us up for success as human beings, not just as creative people.”
For Key, it’s about taking all the teachings they’ve discovered as a band and making use of them to their future, realizing that the album’s title refers not simply to the previous behind them, however what lies forward.
“This record needed to be the ultimate revival, the ultimate redemption song for our band,” Key stated. “And so far it’s, it’s proven to be that.”
