Pop Punk is a well-trodden genre at this point, but it isn’t dead. Not with the strength of bands like Neck Deep. This is an act that has impressed me a lot over the last half-decade or so – 2017’s The Peace and the Panic and 2020’s All Distortions are Intentional were both incredibly strong albums, each with songs like “In Bloom” or “Sonderland” or “I Revolve (Around You)” that stay in my regular rotation. So, of course, I’ve been looking forward to this release.
Neck Deep is the band’s fifth full-length album, and 2024 marks the tenth anniversary of the release of their first. So it’s a big milestone year for them.
At only ten songs and 33 minutes, though, Neck Deep is the shortest album for the band to-date; it’s only one minute shorter than their debut, Wishful Thinking, but their last two were both at the 39-minute mark. There are also several weaker tracks on the album. Most notably, “They May Not Mean To (But They Do)” draws directly from Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse”, which is an incredible and memorable poem – if you don’t know it, go read it. As great as it is to hear the poem, and its intergenerational sentiments, working its way deeper into our societal zeitgeist, the song doesn’t really work. The chorus is overly repetitive and the hooks are just too basic.
Several other tracks just lack the depth I’ve come to expect from Neck Deep, including the first two songs on the album, “Dumbstruck Dumbf**k” and “Sort Yourself Out” – they’re still good and enjoyable, but they pale in comparison to the two tracks that follow, “This Is All My Fault” and “We Need More Bricks”.
These two songs, along with a few others in this middle section of the album, have more instrumental and compositional depth; there’s more structure to really hold the energy up and make it shine. “We Need More Bricks”, in particular, is the most punk call-to-action I can imagine.
Several songs have some absolutely blissful lyrical moments (“You’re the rain, I’m the petrichor”?! Come on, that’s a great metaphorical image!) that shine through, and the album at-large has all of the energy. There aren’t any pop-punk ballads on Neck Deep, though – while the lyrics are still strong and display serious emotional honesty at points, there are no songs where that emotion seems to affect the instrumentation in any significant fashion, as it does in songs from past albums (see, again, “In Bloom” and “I Revolve (Around You)”. This shallowness probably holds the album back more than the one bad song.
It’s fun, though. Not a total disappointment. Definitely worth a listen if you want some fun pop punk.
Rating: Green