Thursday, May 29, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: Formula for success

New Found Glory embraces the power of pop

By Brock Radke

There's no better way to piss off the members of a young punk rock band than to group them into the pop punk subgenre. They hate it. In one quick categorization, a witless music critic can strip a band of its underground credibility and assign its music to the realm of "TRL." Sucks to be them.

But it's not that bad. In fact, much of the music we see and hear on MTV and mainstream radio being passed off as punk is actually pop, in case you didn't know. Sure, maybe it's got some ripping guitar riffs and machine gun drum fills, but it's really just a pop song. Just check out the song structure.

Case in point: New Found Glory. These five Floridians have risen to the top of the charts because they embrace pop hooks and melodies and don't apologize for it. While NFG cranks out catchy rockers like "My Friends Over You" and "Hit or Miss" with regularity, the most fun in the band's catalogue can be found in 1998's From the Screen to Your Stereo EP, which featured covers of songs from films.

What's catchier than a punked-up version of that damn Bryan Adams song from that damn Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie? Nothing.

"We're definitely a product of what we grew up listening to," says drummer Cyrus Bolooki, who talks too fast for his own good. "I don't think the pop punk label covers everything that we do. Some of us are into hardcore, some of us were into hair metal...there are a lot of influences. But that song sensibility is where everything meets."

He must be talking about pop song sensibility, right? Yes, he is.

"There's no magic trick to coming up with a great song. But subconsciously, I think we're aware of pop influences and how powerful they are. The pop structure, you know, you take a catchy guitar riff or something to build off of, then you bring in a catchy chorus, then you just repeat it."

It's as simple as that, apparently. Of course, it helps to have someone who can come up with those catchy hooks, and for New Found Glory that person seems to be guitarist Steve Klein. While high-pitched vocalist Jordan Pundik probably gets the most credit for NFG's instantly recognizable hooks, Bolooki said Klein writes most of the lyrics, which deal mostly with heartbreak, growing up and moving on. "We just play music we love and kids seem to identify with it," Bolooki says.

New Found Glory is in the midst of co-headlining the Honda Civic Tour with recent Rolling Stone cover boys Good Charlotte. Bolooki says the band was seriously excited about the tour, not just because it was NFG's biggest headlining gig to date but also because they are such good buds with the Good Charlotte guys.

"It's like a mini-reunion," he says. "We've toured before with Good Charlotte and MxPx and Less Than Jake [which appeared on some Honda Civic dates but won't in Vegas] but it was never as big as this. In our history, one of the most pivotal moments for our band was when these guys took us out, and now we're taking them out, so it's awesome. But there are no egos involved. It was all just talking about what we're going to do in between shows, having Playstation tournaments and backstage disco parties."

Touring hijinks aside, Bolooki says he and his bandmates aren't worried about potential pop punk backlash, or whether New Found Glory will be seen as a band cashing in on a trend. "We've been together for a long time and we've been making the same kind of music for years. If we worry, it's just slightly. We're not trying to take any specific direction or be a certain type of band. We just play what comes out naturally, and I don't feel like we have to do anything to prove we're punk enough or anything else to gain credibility. We never said we were punk, or anything else. We're the same as when we started this band."