Double Dare

The debut album from Houston’s Waterparks is a shot across pop-punk’s bows. They can chug as hard as the greats (“Hawaii”), self-flagellate like monks-in-training (“Royal”) and lambast hypocrisy in punk (“Little Violence”) and the USA (“Made in America”) like seasoned anarchists. But they also innovate the well-worn genre, skewing synth-pop on “Take Her to the Moon”, ambitious on “It Follows” and intimate on “Powerless”, co-produced by none other than Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden.