New Found Glory - Radiosurgery
Falling in love is like a train wreck / If you make it out alive, you still haven't made it / So tell me the truth, you don't know what you do to me, do you?
Release Date: October 4, 2011
Genre: Pop-punk
Label: Epitaph Records
Producer(s): Neal Avron
Okay, I call bullshit. For this blog, I’ve mostly been using Wikipedia and occasionally Amazon to verify the release dates of the albums I write about. By all accounts, the band started promoting this album in the spring of 2011 and released it in the fall. But I swear, on my usually very good memory, that I already had it in my hands that June or July and mostly listened to it over summer vacation. Their former guitarist Steve Klein even called it “a really catchy summer record,” which only reinforces this memory. But since they’re from Florida, maybe it’s always summer for them.
After several years of pushing their sound in different directions (2006’s softer Coming Home and 2009’s heavier Not Without a Fight), New Found Glory returned to the straightforward energetic pop-punk sound that made them so big in the early 2000s. The songs on Radiosurgery are punchy and short -- the longest, “Map of Your Body,” is only 3:28. According to guitarist Chad Gilbert, they were also aiming to pay tribute to the old school punk bands who influenced them, which explains the faithful cover of “Blitzkrieg Bop” here. If there’s one message to be gleaned from the technicolor artwork and the little flourishes all over the songs themselves, such as the old-timey newscaster on “I’m Not the One” or the many songs that contain clapping, this is an album that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s how you should engage with it. It never became my absolute favorite, but it’s a very fun one to put on pretty much any time.
Highlights
Favorites:
This is one of those albums where picking favorite songs is difficult, because it’s very consistent all the way through. The title track gets things off to a pretty good start. It’s probably not to the level of their classic openers like “Understatement,” as evidenced by the fact that they don’t play it live anymore, but I still like it a lot. You can learn the straightforward, clanging chorus on one listen.
“Summer Fling, Don’t Mean a Thing” (the title comes from Grease) has a great pre-chorus leading effectively into a hard-hitting chorus. It’s one of the faster ones, but by NFG standards, many of these songs actually aren’t super fast.
I just said it’s hard to pick a favorite, but “Trainwreck” is the song I feel most confident giving that crown. It’s not fast enough to be a catchy bop, but both the verses and chorus hit extremely hard. And in between those hard-hitting moments, sometimes the instruments briefly stop altogether -- a hallmark of the so-called “easycore” subgenre they pioneered.
“I Want to Believe,” “Connect the Dots,” and “First Bite” were previously unreleased songs included on Kill It Live, their live album from 2013. Of those, “Connect the Dots” is my favorite, and seems to generally be a fan favorite for fans who are die-hard enough to listen to B-sides. The verses do their job drawing you in emotionally, then the chorus speeds up to bring in that big hook. It reminds me of their self-titled album -- a lot of songs from this time period do, and I think it was intentional.
Least Favorites:
“Drill It In My Brain” is fine, but melodically, quite simplistic and repetitive. It lacks the ebbs and flows, the ups and downs that tend to elevate a NFG song for me.
I think the chorus of the deluxe track “Separate Beds” is annoying. I realize that’s a me problem, but I can certainly see why it didn’t make the standard album.
Final Thoughts
Radiosurgery is a solid addition to the New Found Glory catalog. The songs aren’t their all-time greatest hits, but they stick to the fun sound that made them so beloved in the first place. It is one of their more nostalgic records for me, taking me back to that last summer of high school and all the hope and energy that came with it. By the time their next one came out, everything would be different -- for me and the band.
Spreadsheet
My brain is breaking at how this ended up with a higher mathematical average than their self-titled or Catalyst, but as I’ve learned doing this project, that doesn’t matter. I will round it down to ⭐⭐⭐1/2.
Further Reading
(Podcast) Punk-o-Rama: New Found Glory: Radiosurgery (This podcast is a decade old, but there’s so much great info about the creative process here, it’s gotta be one of my new favorites.)