The days are getting warmer, the evenings later, and just in time for summer, Maine quintet Sparks The Rescue return with their second full-length of bright and bristling pop-punk. Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With isn’t quite a home run, but it’s an adventurous and well-crafted album with more heft than it lets on at first listen.

Singer Alex Roy frequently traffics in the usual pop-punk cliches, but Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With continually surprises with moments of jarring, unflinching honesty. Roy seems unafraid of painting himself as the bad guy, and not just in a slightly-edgy-with-a-heart-of-gold way.The approach shines on the spectacular leadoff track, “Saturday Skin,” pairing lust and bad intentions with a chorus as catchy as head lice.  And the hedonistic romp “Better Side Of Me” places the bad girl on the pedestal and surrounds her with sublime “oh-oh” vocals and a killer guitar hook. (Roy’s lyrical approach particularly glows when contrasted with the guest-rapper Spose’s juvenile interlude, a dark blemish on the album’s brightest moment). The revelations are overhonest but not gratuitous; baring one’s soul can be a lot uglier in practice than it sounds in theory, but what is art for if not gussying up ugly truths— and dirtying the easy, pretty ones?  

It’s a delicate balance really, and while the lyrics generally fall on the right side of the refinement line, the production polish on Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With has shined much of Sparks The Rescue’s appealing grit clean off. While the songs rock harder than first full-length Eyes To The Sun, there’s a vibrancy in the band’s live set that sometimes fails to translate here; their manic energy has been tamped down.  

The subdued production works best on the album’s dialed-down numbers. “Vanities” is a near-perfect bit of Third Eye Blind style midtempo melancholia with breezy bass-fueled verses that blossom into an achingly wistful chorus; “How To Make A Heart Hollow,” featuring an achingly sweet cameo from The Morning Of’s Jessica Leplon, would slot seamlessly into the middle third of any of the last decade’s Jimmy Eat World discs. But tracks like the Old 97’s style Americana-meets-the-Beatles pop of “Holiday” and the summery “Postcard Of A Tidal Wave” lack bite.

Ultimately though, despite the production choices, the quality of the songs shines through. Worst Thing I’ve Been Cursed With is the season’s first great summer pop record, carefully honed to satisfy all your top-down cruising needs. If it isn’t a complete success, that’s merely because SparksThe Rescue have only just begun to show on record what they’re clearly capable of as a band.

****/*****

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman