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Sounds Good Feels Good
Sounds Good Feels Good in Bloomington, MN
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With their spiky hair, electric guitars, and dewy, lip-ringed smiles, Australia's
5 Seconds of Summer
are often dubbed the
One Direction
of punk-pop. It's an admittedly facile if apt comparison, reinforced by the fact that
5SOS
(
Five Sauce
, as their fans call them) toured with
in 2013. However, even if
are a punk boy band, that's a minor distinction, and one that's arguably been around since
Green Day
brought it to inception with 1994's
Dookie
. It's also a brilliant marketing tool brought to its apotheosis at the dawn of the millennium by
blink-182
's multi-platinum album
Enema of the State
. Of course, when
mugged on a beach as they did in the video for "All the Small Things," it was a satirical goof on the greater TRL teen pop world that the trio found itself implausibly at the epicenter of in 1999. For
, most of whom were still in diapers when the video premiered, it might as well have been the genesis moment, the birth of a cross-genre aesthetic rife with
blink
's cheeky punk attitude, but one in which the implied irony is lost, and everything is taken at face value.
16 years after
's breakthrough,
have taken stock of all the small things with their sophomore album, 2015's
Sounds Good Feels Good
, a slick, professional production that finds them embracing their punky boy band image with unabashed glee. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer
John Feldmann
the Used
,
All Time Low
Plain White T's
),
also features collaborations with a handful of like-minded if slightly older artists, including
Good Charlotte
's
Benji
and
Joel Madden
, and
Alex Gaskarth
. Generally speaking, this big brother/little brother vibe works, and cuts like "She's Kinda Hot" and "Permanent Vacation" are upbeat, singalong-ready anthems that sound birthed from the hormonal fantasies of teenage bros who subsist on Mountain Dew and Sour Patch Kids, and the wet dreams of rich, middle-aged record executives. The rest of the album reveals a more earnest inclination, with
delving into some dancey,
1975
-esque post-punk on "Waste the Night," going for orchestral flourishes on the ballad "Invisible," and shading their chunky '90s
Radiohead
guitars with crooning emo angst on "Airplanes."
That said, one wonders how
can get away with blatantly lifting the melody of
Duran Duran
's "Hungry Like the Wolf," as they do on "Hey Everybody!" The answer is by freely copping to the lift and crediting
. In the end, though, perhaps we shouldn't be too critical of the band's unabashed cut-and-paste sound, especially if the songs are as a catchy as they are here. As
sing on "Hey Everybody!" "We can all get some, yeah, we can all get paid." ~ Matt Collar
5 Seconds of Summer
are often dubbed the
One Direction
of punk-pop. It's an admittedly facile if apt comparison, reinforced by the fact that
5SOS
(
Five Sauce
, as their fans call them) toured with
in 2013. However, even if
are a punk boy band, that's a minor distinction, and one that's arguably been around since
Green Day
brought it to inception with 1994's
Dookie
. It's also a brilliant marketing tool brought to its apotheosis at the dawn of the millennium by
blink-182
's multi-platinum album
Enema of the State
. Of course, when
mugged on a beach as they did in the video for "All the Small Things," it was a satirical goof on the greater TRL teen pop world that the trio found itself implausibly at the epicenter of in 1999. For
, most of whom were still in diapers when the video premiered, it might as well have been the genesis moment, the birth of a cross-genre aesthetic rife with
blink
's cheeky punk attitude, but one in which the implied irony is lost, and everything is taken at face value.
16 years after
's breakthrough,
have taken stock of all the small things with their sophomore album, 2015's
Sounds Good Feels Good
, a slick, professional production that finds them embracing their punky boy band image with unabashed glee. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer
John Feldmann
the Used
,
All Time Low
Plain White T's
),
also features collaborations with a handful of like-minded if slightly older artists, including
Good Charlotte
's
Benji
and
Joel Madden
, and
Alex Gaskarth
. Generally speaking, this big brother/little brother vibe works, and cuts like "She's Kinda Hot" and "Permanent Vacation" are upbeat, singalong-ready anthems that sound birthed from the hormonal fantasies of teenage bros who subsist on Mountain Dew and Sour Patch Kids, and the wet dreams of rich, middle-aged record executives. The rest of the album reveals a more earnest inclination, with
delving into some dancey,
1975
-esque post-punk on "Waste the Night," going for orchestral flourishes on the ballad "Invisible," and shading their chunky '90s
Radiohead
guitars with crooning emo angst on "Airplanes."
That said, one wonders how
can get away with blatantly lifting the melody of
Duran Duran
's "Hungry Like the Wolf," as they do on "Hey Everybody!" The answer is by freely copping to the lift and crediting
. In the end, though, perhaps we shouldn't be too critical of the band's unabashed cut-and-paste sound, especially if the songs are as a catchy as they are here. As
sing on "Hey Everybody!" "We can all get some, yeah, we can all get paid." ~ Matt Collar
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