Yellowcard - Yellowcard

Rating:

Essentially a greatest hits, minus the hits.

Knowing the album you’re about to release is your last must add considerable weight and pressure. Now on their tenth studio album, Yellowcard are using this moment to tie-up any loose ends they have after their twenty-plus year career. Across the ten tracks we find the band not straying too far from the Yellowcard formula: it’s straightforward pop punk, with their unique violin twist.

Certainly what they have on offer is a strong record. It powerfully utilises emotive lyrics and large choruses to emphasise their point, but there’s very little to be discovered. New listeners will have no issue in succumbing to the melodic qualities that will appear throughout the band’s back catalogue, whereas old fans can be sure this is more of a run through of what got Yellowcard this far through life.

In terms of individual tracks, ‘Got Yours’ is a heavy number that uses a simple guitar riff to cut through and is certainly one of the more promising moments of the album, while around it the aforementioned formula takes shape in the majority of the songs. Toward the end of the album there is brief moment of respite in the form of ‘I’m A Wrecking Ball’, a majority acoustic track that lays the groundwork for the band’s swan song and grand finale ‘Fields & Fences’. At just under seven minutes long it boils over this course to a mammoth crescendo that’s laden with strings, which depending on your view of such approaches, may or may not seem mildly over indulged.

After twenty plus years, here we have the final Yellowcard record. Essentially a greatest hits, minus the hits. Steven Loftin