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New Found Glory
Published: July 2004
Story: Jeff Royer
Photo: Fly Magazine photo by Natalie Clark |
Somebody has to go first.
The pop-punk and emo scene has simply grown too big for its
underground britches. Someone has to cross over into the mainstream.
Somebody has to be the first emo pop-culture celebrity.
"OK, fine," says New Found Glory. "We'll do it."
Over the past few years, the little-emo-band-that-could has
transitioned from garage-band anonymity to indie stardom to
multi-platinum mainstream success. No one could have predicted in
2000, when a younger and punker New Found Glory was singing juvenile,
borderline-annoying songs about teenage heartbreak, that in summer
2004 they'd be holding the No. 2 slot on "TRL" and sitting at No. 3
on the Billboard album charts, right after Usher and Method Man.
"It's really weird to be compared to bands like Backstreet Boys and
other pop groups," laughs drummer Cyrus Bolooki about the band's,
well, newfound glory. "We're still pretty freaked out by a lot of
things. But it's great to think about having autograph signings where
there's hundreds of people or playing in front of thousands of
people."
The band's newest album, Catalyst (May 2004), which was shipped at
Gold status, is the Frosted Shredded Wheat of music: it's got so many
sugary pop hooks that your kids will never suspect that there's some
real pop artistry going on here. Impossibly triumphant melodies,
sharp song structure, plenty of showmanship - New Found Glory makes
you forget that writing a good pop song is really freaking hard. Hard
for most people, that is.
"We're not really trying too hard. This is all very comfortable and
natural for us," Bolooki says to Fly. "Our style is really more about
energy and about expressing ourselves in a very familiar way where
people can really get the idea easily." Well, then, mission
accomplished. Catalyst is utterly saturated with pop-punk gems that,
even after just one listen, stick in your brain like a commercial
jingle. Exhibit A: the leadoff single, "All Downhill From Here,"
which is impacting big-city radio stations as we speak.
Regardless of how "easy" it is for New Found Glory to do what they
do, they appear to be doing it better each time. Part of that is due
to the band's conscious effort to do some growing up. I mean, sure,
they're still writing bad high-school poetry about girls, but there's
a traceable progression in the music that divorces them from the
prissy, school-boy punk of contemporaries like Simple Plan. While
their just-shy-of-platinum release Sticks and Stones (2002) was an
album that those of us over 25 had to listen to in secret, Catalyst
can be enjoyed in broad daylight.
"We definitely are growing up," says Bolooki. "I believe that with
the music kind of being a little different than it's been before, and
with us really stepping outside of the whole general genre of
pop-punk that people have been hearing in the last year, I think it's
really going to define us. People may realize that you don't
necessarily have to be the same band over and over or not just have
one little genre to capitalize on." Some of those stepping stones
come in the form of string arrangements and gospel choirs - New Found
Glory even sneaks a sweet, little ballad onto this record. As if the
girls weren't already swooning over lead singer Jordan Pundik with
his mall-punk hair and bad-boy sneer.
This summer, they'll be swooning by the thousands when NFG headlines
the Warped Tour for its 10th anniversary - an honor for any band even
remotely related to the punk or emo scene. "Everybody in our band had
been to prior Warped Tours before we even played it - a couple of the
people in the band had been to the very first Warped Tour ever - and
each one of us sat in that crowd dreaming about what it would be like
to be on the tour," Bolooki recalls. "Since we started playing it, we
realized that it really is a great community. It's like a big family.
The shows are amazing, and those things, they can't stop getting
better. It's crazy.
"I'm really excited that we're doing it this year," he adds. "It's
amazing that it can commemorate the 10th-year anniversary, but it's
awesome just in the fact that it's the Warped Tour alone."
Although they've traded all-age firehall shows for headlining slots
on one of the summer's biggest tours, Bolooki says New Found Glory
haven't come so far that they forget their roots.
"We can always look back and remember the days of playing clubs with
20 people. We can remember what it was like to be crammed in a van
for two years. We can remember what it was like to have eight people
in one hotel room. So, there's a lot of things that we can always
look back on that make you definitely not take this for granted,"
Bolooki explains. "It's a dream to do all of this. It's an amazing
thing to do, and if you're smart about it, you can live off of this
and enjoy your life.
"We're very comfortable with what we've done and what we're capable
of, and we know that we're going to be here for a while," he
continues. "We know what we're here to do. It's time for us to do it."
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