Listen Up!

New Found Glory’s 11th album arrives on the cusp of the band’s 30th anniversary, but the Florida pop-punk perennials are still playing like teenagers bouncing across the Warped Tour stage. <i>Listen Up!</i> comes preloaded with all of New Found Glory’s signature moves: the accelerated hardcore-schooled sprints, the chugga-chugga riffs and Jordan Pundik’s ageless, unerringly melodic vocals. But the album filters its youthful energy through a veteran band’s reflective perspective: “Beer and Blood Stains” is a nostalgic nod to their formative years playing dives in the Sunshine State, capped by a mosh-metal breakdown and celebratory group chant of “Florida!”; “Medicine” settles into a Pixies-esque bass groove to paint a poignant portrait of young punks falling in love and growing older. On the closing pogo-pit stomper “Frankenstein’s Monster”, Pundik declares, “I just want to feel alive again/Like those ’80s songs where they party till morning,” and with <i>Listen Up!</i>, New Found Glory get drunk on the magic formula for staying forever young.