So Adult – Rookie

  • Keith Rosson posted
  • Reviews

So Adult

Rookie - Self Released

Pop punk’s unquestionably experienced a resurgence over the past few years. Rock-solid, reputable labels like Kiss Of Death, Dead Broke and Traffic Street have based much of their extensive catalogs off the fact. There are a lot of bands making raggedy-ass pop punk these days, with scrappy melodies and a common theme of disillusion and disenchantment.

On one hand, it’s proven to be a pretty good formula – the shit’s generally pretty fun to listen to. On the other hand, most bands definitely run the risk of being just that, formulaic: I’m personally a fan of a lot of pop punk, but we’ve really reached a saturation point. So many of the bands these days sound pretty interchangeable.

Nice thing is that So Adult manages to avoid that particular pitfall and held my attention with their cassette EP, Rookie. (While this isn’t necessarily the place to discuss the relevancy of cassettes, I will go ahead and say that I love em. But cassette EPs are about one step away from cassingles, and they suck. There’s something unspeakably lame about cassette EPs that their brethren the 7” does not suffer from. And at only two songs a side, So Adult is guilty as hell. To their credit, a download code is included, but still. Sheesh.)

All that aside, these guys really aren’t bad at all. Their sound harkens back to a day when pop punk’s gloss hadn’t been scrubbed and scratched away with self-consciousness. Their melodies are big, the vocals are clean and concise (reminding me quite a bit of the guy from Coffin Break, or a younger Ben Nichols) and their songs are well-recorded and nicely punchy. And again, there’s that charming lack of self-consciousness.

It’s not a jaw-dropper, but Rookie’s are refreshing – there’s hooks and brevity and that strangely rare and endearingly positive vibe throughout. All in all, it’s too short. Other than that, nice work.