MGF Reviews New Found Glory – Hits

Reviews, Top Story


New Found Glory – Hits
Geffen (3/18/08)
Pop-punk / Alternative

Uh, miss.

Not popular for even ten years yet, New Found Glory are already getting the greatest-hits treatment from Universal. For those who don’t shop at PacSun, NFG are a pop-punk band from Florida who were one of the earlier progenitors of the mall-emo trend. While they have quite a few loyal fans (when I used to live in Florida, it was a badge of distinction to have a shitty CD-R with a typewritten label for “A New Found Glory”), NFG were never quite the superstars that peers like Blink-182 or Good Charlotte managed to be. Plenty of teenage girls in the early part of this decade creamed up over them, and they have a wee smidgeon of hardcore credibility due to guitarist Chad Gilbert’s past in Shai Hulud. Singer Jordan Pundik’s airy whine and the paint-by-numbers inoffensive pop-punk they played drove them to modest success, scoring a radio hit in late-’02/early-’03 with “My Friends Over You”, and recently their overproduced single “It’s Not Your Fault” got some play.

NFG’s problem really rested in their timing: they started out when teen-romance-obsessed pop-punk was still mainly an underground trend, but they started late and by the time the Madden twins and Blink-182 blew open the mainstream gates for the genre, NFG got lumped in with all the factory-setting emo posers. If they did more to distinguish themselves they’d be saved from that fate, but they’ve always been too powerfully average to really rise above. The fact that they even have a hits package is more a testament to their loyalist fanbase than any real achievements in their career.

As for the songs? Bugger all if I can even tell them apart. “My Friends Over You”, the only “hit” to speak of on this collection, has an admirable lyrical theme but offers very little in the way of a hook. “Hit or Miss” has a little more Ritalin-fueled energy than most of their work but not so much that you’d notice. “It’s Not Your Fault” is a little catchier, but it’s overproduced in the way that Good Charlotte’s foray into disco, “I Don’t Want to Be In Love”, currently is—the verses have more vocal effects and layers than is necessary and it robs the song of any real emotion. The rest of the tracks (including the unreleased “Situations” and previously Japan-only “Constant Static”) are pretty much color-by-numbers. NFG doesn’t really have fans, they have devotees. If you already like them, you probably already stopped reading. If you don’t, don’t bother using this collection as a primer; you aren’t really missing much. This band fills me with nothing but sheer ennui.

The only thing that I did find interesting about this album was the liner notes by guitarist Chad Gilbert. He astutely points out that none of the included songs are really “hits” (“My Friends Over You” being the most successful, and even then it only reached #5 on the Alternative charts). Then he says, and I quote:

“I just want you to know I consider this CD to be our Chapter 1- a compilation of NFG’s beginning. I feel our best songs are yet to come. Most people release greatest hits CDs at the end of their career. We’ve only just started. We aren’t going anywhere.”

Yuh-huh. If that isn’t wishful thinking, then I’ve misunderstood what that phrase means. The fact that Universal even released a greatest-hits record for these guys only really makes them look older and more of a fossil than they need be; regardless, their idiom is dying. The high-school girls who loved NFG five years ago are a little older and their younger siblings aren’t eating what NFG is feeding them. I’ll eat my hat without salt if this isn’t the last major-label release from New Found Glory, and possibly their swan song as a band altogether.

As for this album, don’t bother. Take my word for it; it’s a lesson in mediocrity. I know my opinion is a little clouded because I’m not a New Found Glory fan, and as I said, you either love NFG or you don’t pay attention to them. If you want a more detailed overview of the subtleties between all three chords they use, ask one of their dyed-in-the-wool true-blue fans. You can probably still find them at the mall.

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