Reuniting the lineup from their debut album, 2002’s
Tell All Your Friends,
Taking Back Sunday seek to recapture the fire of that early lineup on their eponymous fifth album. Nearly a decade later, we find the post-hardcore outfit a little older and a little wiser, but sounding no worse for the wear, with
John Nolan and
Shaun Cooper sliding back into the lineup as if they had never left. The pair’s seamless return works in the band’s favor, reinvigorating their sound with the chemistry that brought them to the national stage without being a tired retread of things they’ve already done. In a lot of ways,
Taking Back Sunday is the sophomore album the band never had. Songs like “El Paso” and “You Got Me” find the band both refining and expanding their sound, offering up tighter songs without sacrificing intensity in the process. The big surprises on the album come by way of the highly danceable “Money (Let It Go),” where deep fuzz bass and stomping drums blast their way through a garage-influenced dancefloor scorcher, and “This Is All Now,” which drifts back and forth between a verse anchored by an angular,
Dismemberment Plan-style beat and a classic, singalong-style chorus. Normally, you’d expect a band to gain new members in order to inject this kind of life into their sound, and with three albums and seven years passing between
Nolan and
Cooper’s exodus and return, it’d be an easy point to argue that they almost are new members. What their return does bring, though, is that unquantifiable “getting the band back together” feeling and all of the excitement that comes with old friends getting back together to do what they do best. ~ Gregory Heaney