Jersey Calling - Parasocial Security (self-released)

Pop punk was always a genre that took a lot of flack, not always unfairly. It was often derided in its nineties golden age for embracing the lowest common denominator creativity and even more dubious lyrics. I blame bands such as Sum 182 for setting the bar so low. Blink 41 didn’t really help much, either. But, listening to Parasocial Security, from Jersey Calling, I wonder if it could have all been different had they been around back then. We will never know but one one thing is obvious, the current pop punk scene is in safe hands.

And it doesn’t take long to come to that conclusion, just give the album opener, “Gods & Cowboys” a quick spin. Not only does the song blend pop-punk panache with alt-rock drive, addictiveness with authenticity, it has all sorts of great lyricism going on; at a turn poetic and poignant, metaphorical and anthemic. That’s how you do it.

But one song does not an album make, and so on we go and wonderous things are revealled. “The Things Life Leaves Behind” is nostalgic and narrative in nature, and “Back Seat Driver” is raw and raucous, again, as much rock as it is punk, a song very much existing between pop and a hard place, its is big but it is also clever.

“Heartstrings” is a great song, one that has something to say about where pop-punk and it’s associated sub-genres came from, running on slightly funky, slightly ska infused bass lines but then, most unexpectedly, seeming to include a mandolin break, or at least a guitar doing a great impression of one. Unexpected…and brilliantly so.

And perhaps my favourite track comes near the end, “Queen of the Unclean” being a great coming together of all the albums elements – punk swagger, rock weight, anthemic sensibilities and sing-along lyrics, energy and elegancy, attitude and eloquence, groove, grit and grind.

All genres move on, it is the way of things and it ensures the constant evolution of music as a whole. You could make an argument for Jersey Calling having moved beyond the strictures of pop-punk as a sound and actually embracing all manner of associated genres and musical paths. But that is the modern, post-genre age for you and maybe they are merely making the most of this new found, musical freedom. Whatever it is they do generically, and however people want to label it, not that it matters, Jersey Calling have a great album in Parasocial Security and that is what is really important here.

Jersey Calling
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