hit song

Pop punk veterans Yellowcard call their comeback album ‘Better Days’ the ‘ultimate redemption song’

More than two decades after their peak, the music of Yellowcard is a pop punk message in a bottle. The note that washed ashore from a simpler time describes the image of a young, sharply-dressed band full of aspirations, thrashing on their instruments — violin included — in the echoey tomb of an underground parking garage in the music video for “Ocean Avenue” as the chorus 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 at the top of his lungs.

That hit song, the title track of 2003’s “Ocean Avenue,” created a tidal wave of success that changed the course of their career from struggling artists to a world-touring headliner and darlings of MTV’s Total Request Live.

“The first time it happened, we were really young,” Key said, gingerly grasping a spoon with his heavily tattooed hand while stirring a cup of hot 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 moment that hasn’t escaped his memory 22 years later. Now, he and his bandmates — violinist Sean Mackin, bassist Josh Portman and guitarist Ryan Mendez — are far from the ocean but not too far from water as they look out at a sparkling pool from the window from a suite at the Yaamava’ Resort and Casino in Highland. A couple hours from now, the band will play a splashy pool party gig for 98.7 ALT FM. The set will include a raft of all the old hits, including “Ocean Avenue” of course, as well as their first new songs in almost a decade.

Before the release of the first singles for the new album, “Better Days,” it might’ve been easy to write off their 11th album as another release destined to be overshadowed by their early catalog. However, with the right amount of internal inspiration and outside help from Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, who produced and played all the drums on the album, the result was a batch of new songs that haven’t simply been washed out to sea. Quite the opposite, actually.

Prior to the album’s release, the title track “Better Days” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. This achievement came after a 22-year wait since their first appearance on the chart with the “Ocean Avenue” single “Way Away.” Key also notes that it’s the first time fans are using the band’s new music for their TikTok videos instead of “Ocean Avenue.”

“That’s crazy,” Key said. “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 since the band reemerged to play a reunion set at RiotFest in Chicago, following their 2017 farewell show at the House of Blues in Anaheim. At the point they were ready to call it quits, the band was struggling to sell enough tickets to their shows to keep the dream alive. For Mackin, fatherhood forced him to also consider his family’s financial stability, prompting him to enter the corporate workforce as a sales rep and eventually becoming a service director for Toyota. At one point, he was responsible for managing 120 employees. “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 said.

After Yellowcard’s hiatus, Key continued playing music in several projects that distanced themselves from the pop punk sound — including recording solo work under his full name William Ryan Key, touring with bassist Portman at his side. Key also produced a post-rock electronic-heavy project called Jedha with Mendez, and the pair also does a lot of TV and film scoring work. For a long time, Key and his bandmates mourned the loss of what they had with Yellowcard. It was the most important thing in Key’s life, though he said he didn’t realize how much the band truly shaped him until it was over.

Yellowcard members sitting on a couch

During their hiatus, band members took day jobs. One member managed 120 Toyota employees before the 2022 Riot Fest reunion reignited their passion.

(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 said.

But after some time away, the raucous 2022 Riot Fest reunion show relit the band’s fire in a way they hadn’t expected. They followed up with a 2023 EP “Childhood Eyes” that pushed the band to take things further with a new full album. Along with these plans came the stunning news that Barker would sign on to produce and play drums for them on the project. For a band that grew up idolizing Blink 182 and Barker specifically as the band’s red-hot engine behind the kit who spent the last 20 years evolving into a music mogul, it was a surreal experience.

“We look at him like a general. It was never lost that the best drummer of our generation is playing drums with us,” Mackin said. “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 front of Barker in the studio and had a few moments where negative, self-conscious thoughts were getting the better of him in the vocal booth during recording. Instead of getting annoyed, he says Barker helped ease his anxiety with a few simple words.

“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 truly speaking from experience. He told Key at the time that he’d just recorded 87 rough takes of his parts on “Lonely Road,” his hit song with Jelly Roll and MGK. “That was a real crossroads for me,” Key said.

The aspect of the album that feels most akin to “Ocean Avenue” was that Barker never really allowed them to overthink anything when it came to songwriting, a skill the band had unwittingly mastered as kids back in the “Ocean Avenue” days by writing songs on the fly in the studio with little time to care about how a song might end up before 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 said. “ 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 final product moves swiftly over 10 songs, the track list starts with a flurry of energy from the bombastic opening drums of “Better Days” that propel a song on inner reflection on the past. It moves on to the high-energy heartbreak of “Love Letters,” featuring Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio. Avril Lavigne lends her soaring vocals to the unrequited love song “You Broke Me Too.” Songs like “City of Angels” and “Bedroom Posters” track episodes in Key’s life where his band’s hiatus took a negative toll on his outlook on life but also about looking for a way back to rediscovering himself. The album wraps with the acoustic lullaby “Big Blue Eyes,” which Keys wrote as a tribute to his son.

Though the songs on “Better Days” frequently wrestle with self-doubt and uncertainty, the response from fans has been surprisingly supportive, Key said.

“I cannot recall seeing this level of overwhelming positive feedback. People are just flipping out over these songs,” the frontman said. “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.” Despite the success, Key is hesitant to label the band comeback kids, “probably because we are officially passed kids label,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the return of the gentlemen?” Mackin joked.

Yellowcard performing for a large crowd

Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker produced the album, helping the band recapture the spontaneous energy that defined their 2003 breakthrough “Ocean Avenue.”

(Joe Brady)

Whatever they call themselves, coming back to the band after so many years of different experiences has made Yellowcard’s second shot at a career feel all the more 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 said. “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 lessons they’ve learned as a band and applying them to their future, realizing that the album’s title refers not just to the past behind them, but what lies ahead.

“This record needed to be the ultimate revival, the ultimate redemption song for our band,” Key said. “And so far it’s, it’s proven to be that.”

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‘SNL’ host Quinta Brunson once again teaches a comedy master class

When she appeared for the first time on “Saturday Night Live” a year ago, “Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson gave one of last year’s best hosting performances, bringing great comic timing and characters to the show.

It was no fluke. Returning to the show for her second outing, Brunson proved just as adept at bringing her comedic sensibilities to an episode that featured an overall strong lineup of new sketches. There was only one retread and even that one, a reprise of the standout “Traffic Altercation,” was worth revisiting.

It’s interesting to compare Brunson’s just-as-excellent second shot to two other comics who hosted in Season 49 and Season 50: Nate Bargatze and Shane Gillis. While Bartgatze’s return was good, it didn’t quite reach the peaks of the first appearance. And Gillis, inexplicably called back into service after a not-great debut as host, was much worse the second time around.

But Brunson didn’t lose a step since last year; she was funny playing a time-traveling Harriet Tubman who, along with Kenan Thompson as Frederick Douglass, didn’t want to go back to the past in a “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” parody; went daffy as one of several bad employees at a leadership summit; played a model in an ad for Forever 31’s sad, oversized clothing; and one of “Two B— vs. a Gorilla” (the other was Ego Nwodim), about trash-talking women facing off with a gorilla at the zoo.

If that wasn’t enough, she played a joke-spouting old-time boxer, Jerry “Jackrabbit” Tulane, who stops being so funny after getting beaten up multiple times in the ring, and one half of a feisty and unexpectedly sexy “OnlySeniors” couple in an insurance ad.

Bruson scored again and again and even sang in the monologue; she should have an open invitation to return next season.

Musical guest Benson Boone backflipped before performing, “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” and did not do a backflip before performing “Mystical Magical.” He briefly appeared on Weekend Update as an Applebee’s waiter, referencing his hit song “Beautiful Things,” which Boone didn’t perform.

Just as President Trump has dominated news cycle after news cycle this year, so has he commandeered the “SNL” cold open: once again, James Austin Johnson played the hard-charging POTUS, delivering a string of executive orders with creepy lord of darkness Stephen Miller (an increasingly vampiric Mikey Day). Trump signed orders to deport “Sesame Street” along with Elmo (“Brought to you by the letter L for El Salvador”), pardon J.K. Rowling for transphobic comments and bring back Columbus Day for Italian-Americans such as Tony Soprano, Benny Blanco (who is Jewish) and Childish Gambino (the stage name of Donald Glover, who is Black). Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) appeared for an order to keep Hispanic babies from getting their ears pierced, and Trump also made moves to make the New York Times Connections game easier, turn the word “Recession” into “Recess” and outlaw ghosts. “Every Christmas Eve, I get visited by three ghosts. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” Trump said.

Brunson began her monologue with jokes about the time she worked for a phone sex line (“By the end of my first week, I had only made $1.38.”) before landing on the topic of her song and dance number: her height. The 4-foot-11 actress said, “They tried to cast me as a kid on ‘Abbott Elementary’ and I wrote that!” Eschewing a microphone that was too high, she sang about the great things about being small, such as being a cheap date with wine. She was soon joined by another diminutive star: pop singer Sabrina Carpenter, who compared notes with her, asking, “When you read short stories, do they feel like novels?” Former NBA star Dwyane Wade towered over the ladies, but insisted he’s still short compared to other basketball players at 6-foot-4. “I just really want to be in the song,” he said.

Best sketch of the night: Don’t ask your parents too many questions about ‘OnlySeniors’

Brunson and Thompson play elderly parents whose kids (Nwodim and Devon Walker) find out they’ve got life insurance through a service that requires them to have sex and spend a lot of time naked for online fans. “We set up our camera and do stuff to each other. And watch the money just start pouring in,” they’re told. When they’re not interacting with their “Filthy little chat babies,” they’re spending time with their also-naked neighbors and (checks notes) sitting on cakes? In these uncertain economic times, it’s a business model that seems very viable.

Also good: Now you now the traffic-altercation sign language for Iraq

Mikey Day and Brunson faced off again in separate cars (but didn’t seem to recognize each other from last time) to battle with a series of hand gestures and facial expressions over bad parking on a ferry. Day’s character can’t forgive the other driver for parking too close, saying he needs more than half an inch, which invites a devastating response from the woman in the other car. Day’s daughter Quinn (Chloe Fineman) participates with over-the-line sexual gestures, prompting Brunson’s character to make gestures for a gardening tool as she tells him who he raised. Sure, it’s a repeat, but again it’s executed perfectly on both ends, with the only disappointing note being an appearance by Colin Jost, who’s trying to sell the real-life ferry he bought with Pete Davidson. It’s not that Jost is bad, it’s just that it couldn’t possibly live up to Mellssa McCarthy’s appearance when they did a version of this sketch with Martin Short.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: And now a word from Michael Longfellow

Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang played horny barflys at Applebee’s who are sad about chain restaurants closing down. But it was Michael Longfellow’s declaration of not getting a Real ID that won “Update” this week. Longfellow said, “You already gave me an ID. If it’s fake, you fix it. The Pope is dead, let me mourn.” It didn’t quite follow, but Longfellow went on to joke about his light work schedule of 12 hours a week at “SNL” (“I’m just not in that much stuff this season.”) before making up rules for air travel including, “If the TSA touches your crotch, they have to keep going until you climax.” It’s true, Longfellow has been a light presence this season, but in segments like this, it’s clear he’s got a great command of his delivery. It will be nice if he’s back for Season 51 and gets more screen time to show off his talents.

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