by Richie Unterberger

You know these guys are old-school pop-punk when "Hit or Miss" begins with the words "the needle on my record player has been wearing thin" at a time when CDs had been the dominant format for more than a decade. All kidding aside, this is a cheery but somewhat workmanlike pop-punk hybrid. There are choppy uptempo rhythms, spiky buzzing guitars, and youthful harmonies on these dozen concise, to-the-point tracks. It's not just the fact that all five of them thank their mom and dad in the liner notes that gives this major-label punk a wholesome veneer. For all the punk elements in the music, most of the songs are about girls and sticky breakups/heartbreaks/relationship snags, with some agonizing about identity and remaining true to one's ideals thrown on top. They may have a slightly snotty come-on, but they sound too optimistic, like they're having too good of a time, to seem truly dangerous. That's neither here nor there as far as determining whether the album's good, but since various bands have mined the vibe since the late '70s, you have to really do something interesting with the ingredients to make it special. New Found Glory doesn't do so in an original fashion, though the result is good-natured, and there were less likable young punk bands that could have been honored with a major-label deal in 2000.