Yellowcard’s latest album offers many great hooks and just as many cringe-worthy lyrics (“Please let me out before I turn into/A box of things reminding me how much I’m missing you”). Which is to say, this is a decent emo-punk album, like what The Get Up Kids or Hey Mercedes might have made if they didn’t have a cheese filter.
It’s easy to imagine “Keeper” being a hit on the Warped Tour even if it also becomes the background music for the characters on Grey’s Anatomy staring blankly before they confess their sins in the hospital elevator. This is a band that rocks as hard about their broken hearts as anybody.
When gals flummox you this much, it’s no wonder that you view enduring love with something like awe. “Dear Bobbie,” a song about the relationship between singer/guitarist Ryan Key’s grandparents with an actual recording of Key’s grandfather reading a letter to his grandmother, starts off like a folky Bright Eyes song, and then Key sings about what happened more than 50 years ago that changed the lives of two young kids who had no idea what they were getting into.
The song mentions dealing with inevitable fights and building a home together and dying satisfied. Sometimes the most punk thing you can do is make domesticity sound so desirable.
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Yellowcard
Paper Walls
** 1/2