Taking Back Sunday: Louder Now : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Taking Back Sunday's first two albums were tempestuous soap operas for the MySpace generation, setting chaotic punk thrash against dueling boy-boy vocals and lyrics that treated breakups like knives to the gut. The big difference on Taking Back Sunday's major-label debut is that these Long Island Warped Tour heroes have amped up their sound with help from Queens of the Stone Age producer Eric Valentine, delivering a turbocharged attack spiked with dark, catchy melodies and giant choruses. The barnburner "Error Operator" mashes up spidery guitar lines and a shredding rhythm, then erupts into a desperate shouting match between emo pinup Adam Lazzarra and his wingman Fred Mascherino. Lead single "MakeDamnSure" rides a bouncy groove that gives way to stormy power chords, with an obsessive Lazzarra telling his lucky girl, "You can never leave," and yowling a huge sugar-shot refrain that sounds like Bon Jovi turned emo. Like most of Louder Now, it's a skull-rattling slasher with enough pop smarts to keep the heartbroken agony from becoming too much to handle.