Taking Back Sunday- New Again (***)

Try as I might, I could not give New Again the additional ½ star I originally wanted to.

Now this is coming from someone that’s loved everything Taking Back Sunday has put out, someone that believes Tell All Your Friends is a landmark album of the 2000s, and someone that loves the strides they took musically on their last two records. But I suppose things change, and after two stellar albums with guitarist Fred Mascherino, Taking Back Sunday has returned with a new guitarist (Matt Fazzi), a new approach to their song writing, and a new sound with New Again.

Suffice to say, there is a great deal to get used to as a Taking Back Sunday fan.

Forgetting for a second that this band has been a revolving door of musicians since John Nolan’s departure a few years ago, this is the first time that a line up change has left such a dramatic impact on the band’s overall sound. While Taking Back Sunday experimented with stadium rock grandeur on 2006’s Louder Now, New Again tries incredibly hard to be a big sounding rock record.

From the snappy handclaps and chunky riffing on “Sink Into Me” to the pulsing bass work on the album’s title track, it’s clear that every melody line has been written to grab the listener, written to be slick and stick in your head. Unfortunately, this sacrifices some of the band’s uniqueness, dispensing their normally exciting buzz saw time changes that turn on a dime.

So in short, Taking Back Sunday try very hard to impress their listeners and it results in a set of songs that don’t always feel natural. The instrumentation is tight though, Mark O’Connell’s drumming fluttering and precise, Matt Rubano’s bass warm and fuzzy. Hell, Fazzi is a fine guitarist in his own right, exercising his fluid chops on cuts like the embittered “Everything Must Go,” but the band sorely misses Mascherino’s pop sensibilities.

While nothing on New Again is blatantly awful, a majority of these tracks come off like Louder Now b-sides: Fun and entertaining, but missing a certain something that prevents them from becoming truly memorable.

However, the songs that do end up standing out are the ones that seem to have the most musical tension in them, the ones with the natural build-ups and big crescendos. “Summer, Man” begins with a loopy guitar melody that explodes into a propulsive riff-work out, one that perfectly compliments Adam Lazzara’s rock star croon of “So go prove to the world/Well you've already proved/That you just couldn't do on your own…” Elsewhere, cuts like the driving “Capital M-E” and the U2 inspired ballad “Where My Mouth Is” display the bands new found versatility and musical range, but don’t always hit the mark lyrically.

This is a big problem with New Again and for the band itself.

In the past, Taking Back Sunday has ridden Lazzara’s snarky lyrics to really leave a mark, but New Again is the first time where the front man’s tongue has been hit or miss. For every “I was a tower and you were an airplane/We happened before we knew/What was happening…” as found on “Carpathia” there are clunkers such as “Cut Me Up Jenny’s,” “So cut me up, Jenny/Well, cut me up gently…” Lazzara loves tounge-in-cheek metaphors, but when every line HAS to be a one liner, and a hooky one at that, the result is tedious

But bar none, the hardest thing to get used to on New Again is how the band has simply dropped their duel vocal interplay.

This was a staple carried over from Nolan’s time, and Mascherino paid homage to it with his two albums with the group. Now, however, Taking Back Sunday has opted to have Lazzara lead their songs and supplement him with backing Beach Boy harmonies that make the group sound far too modern rock and far too tame. While this might seem like a minor criticism, the back and forth between Lazzara and whom ever the second guitarist was added a surprising amount energy and danger to their tracks. Now, it’s as if the group has to either play twice as fast or write a ballad twice as saccharine to do the trick.

Ultimately, New Again displays a group that’s aiming to be some sort of merchant of cool, but falls short where the group used to soar. While the record itself is easy to digest, the aggravating part is that New Again could have been more than just a record that sounded good. Sadly, the tracks here are so enamored with being fresh and new, that they don’t seem to stick with listeners the same way Taking Back Sunday’s old material does.

Hopefully in the future, the band will realize that new/clever doesn’t always mean better.

Sounds Like: There Is Nothing Left To Lose (Foo Fighters), Action (Punchline), Weezer (The Green Album) (Weezer)

Key Cuts: Summer, Man, Where My Mouth Is, Capital M-E

Click on the artwork to sample some of New Again for yourself!