In 2008, Mayday Parade were on top of the world, riding debut album A Lesson In Romantics’scombination of spry, incisive pop-punk and sprawling, filter-free balladry to high profile tour gigs and a contract with Atlantic Records. The follow up, 2009’s Anywhere But Here, was a misstep in retrospect, a better-than-you-remember collection of co-written and Bendeth-massaged three-minute pop-rock gems that managed to simultaneously fail to catch the ear of radio programmers and mainstream pop audiences and alienate much of the group’s core fanbase. With their future cloudy following a split with Atlantic and the soul of the band up for grabs, Mayday Parade retreated to the comfort of their Florida home and Lesson producers Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount. The resulting self-titled album goes a long way toward resolving the question of what kind of band, exactly, Mayday Parade are.

In Mayday Parade’s original incarnation, frontman Derek Sanders’s voice played the aloe to former co-vocalist Jason Lancaster’s sunburn, his mellifluous, flat tones an asset when paired with Lancaster’s hyper-distinctive gruff, vowel-swallowing phrasing. WIthout his foil on the spit-shined Anywhere But Here, Sanders’s voice tended to get a little lost in the pop sheen, chrome on polished silver. But on Mayday Parade Sanders has added a little edge to his tone, not exactly aggressive but slightly more full and with an underlying hint of desperation, and it makes a world of difference. “You’re Dead Wrong”’s chorus contains the phrase “make my voice brand new”; Sanders hasn’t completely reinvented his voice, but it has once again become a strong point.

Added grit is kind of a theme on Mayday Parade, really. Anywhere But Here was a major label release with its sights clearly set on radio play; Mayday Parade isn’t quite a return to the more rough-hewn form of the band’s earlier works, but it finds a comfortable middle ground. There’s no epic on the scale of debut full length A Lesson In Romantics’s “Miserable At Best” or “You’ll Be The Anchor…”, but there’s a clear move away from the concise and efficient pop of Anywhere But Here’s “Bruised And Scarred” or “Get Up”. (There are also no hooks quite as memorable as those on the aforementioned tracks or “Kids In Love”; one gets the sense that was a conscious decision). Sanders isn’t the strongest lyricist—he has a habit of using clichés as a crutch and isn’t afraid of dropping a completely nonsensical metaphor when the words sound good together—but he’s at his best when set free to ramble, as he does frequently here. His mastery of cadence and good sense for the way vocal sounds interplay with melody make his quantity-over-quality decisions pay off.

That grit carries over to Sanders’s lyrics as well. Mayday Parade have typically focused on the longing romanticism, sepia-tinted nostalgia and youthful exuberance that can so dominate the teen mind, but Mayday Parade dips its brush in a new palate of emotions, colored with anger and bitterness, though always coyly folded into bright pop. Opening track “Oh Well, Oh Well” features the memorable couplet “Oh well, oh well // Guess I’ll see you in hell,” and it sets the tone for numbers like the backbiting “When I See My Friends” and the open wound of “Priceless”. It also leads to one of the album’s strangest juxtapositions, with the singing death wish “A Shot Across The Bow” followed immediately by “Everything’s An Illusion”’s elegy for a life cut short.

Not that everything here is thorns: there’s roses aplenty, especially the musical variety. “No Heroes Allowed” features strings to a better effect than anything on March’s dreadful Valdosta EP, and pairs them with a note-perfect melodic guitar solo from Alex Garcia straight from the CC Deville circa Flesh and Blood school of rock. Indeed, Garcia shines all over Mayday Parade, dropping smooth-but-note-packed solos on a number of tracks that smack of pop metal’s more blues-indebted moments. (One gets the sense Garcia might be the sort of Guns N’ Roses fan that preferred Izzy Stradlin’s solos to Slash’s.) “You’re Dead Wrong” pairs one of those solos with a soaring chorus and a lovely group whoa-oh bridge. And album closer “Happy Endings Are Stories That Haven’t Ended Yet” pays musical homage to two masters of wistful, melancholic melodic reflection, Jimmy Eat World and Pachelbel. Though Mayday Parade might not have any massive hooks that scream radio single, there isn’t a dud track in the bunch. 

Ultimately, Mayday Parade doesn’t seem likely to grow the band’s profile, but it’s pretty clear that that wasn’t the point. Mayday Parade is solid—if unspectacular—from start to finish, and presented without compromise. If the focus for the band this time out was on regaining their footing and welcoming the serious fans back into the fold, consider this mission accomplished. There are no easy answers here, but opting for substance at the expense of style feels like the right move for Mayday Parade. On “Without The Bitter The Sweet Isn’t As Sweet,” Sanders pines “you don’t get lucky twice”. Don’t be so sure.

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman

★★★★☆