Bowling For Soup – A Hangover You Don’t Deserve

Bowling For Soup, the fun loving band who brought us songs like Suckerpunch, Girl All The Bad Guys Want, and Punk Rock 101, are back with their new album, A Hangover You Don’t Deserve; and the seventeen track album picks up exactly where they left off.

Each song is a fun, catchy, pop-punk song which is never too serious. They are light-hearted songs about everything from remembering the crazy trends of 1985, their lucky Trucker Hat, wanting someone to come back home in (Ohio (Come Back To Texas)), being dumped (A-Hole), and hating everyone from your hometown (My Hometown). Jaret’s vocals are still nice and crisp, singing catch lyrics that you sing along with almost instantly. Each song is just a good solid pop-punk tune, but don’t get me wrong, they know how to switch it up enough to make it interesting. Take My Hometown for example. The first 50 seconds of it is a nice, slow, acoustic and piano ballard dedicating the song before they jump head first with Jaret saying “I hope you got the fuck out of my hometown!“. It started off slow and then just bursts into a high energy tune, making it the standout track of the album. After that little bit of acoustic sample they gave you, you find yourself craving a another little acoustic part, and they supply that with the closing track Friends O’ Mine. In the middle of Next Ex-Girlfriend and A-Hole, they slow it down with backing “ooh”s and “ahhh”s. Ridiculous is layered with piano melodies, giving it a little extra depth; unfortunately, the last minute of piano to close the song drags on and gets reallllllllly annoying. I skip that part every time. But after that little blunder, Bowling For Soup head into Shut-Up And Smile, which does succeed in making you smile.

A Hangover You Don’t Deserve is a top-class pop-punk album. There are a few weak songs, the bonus song is a complete and total waste of time, but then there are also a bunch of strong, catchy songs. Overall, it all adds up to one good CD.