After the relative failure of Louder Now due to bad production, shoddy vocals, and a blatant use of similar song structures, Taking Back Sunday lost their guitarist Fred Marscheno. This means the had to hire new guys including Matt Squire as their new guitarist. But luckily this also brought a new creative mind into the band who would be with them for the next albums to come. The first of these albums New Again, was a smash and most likely the band's crowning moment. Gone are the bad vocals and crappy production, and say hello to some more naunced song structures and truly a revitalization breath in to the band who many thought were dead.
The new inspiration is front and center as soon as you start the album, hearing New Again. Its one of the best songs on the entire album and all the problems from Louder Now are gone; the vocals are great, crisp and clear, theres a ton of catchy guitar lines running throughout, and the lyrics are quite well done without being too over the top. And most of the album flows in this pattern. They don't even do the verse chorus verse chorus bridge pattern this time; it even goes back to the chorus before ending the song which is something that their first albums Tell All Your Friends very rarely did with all of their songs.
There are a bunch of highlights on this one, the biggest one is Cut Me Up Jenny which has a great simple verse and chorus and a really memorable anthem bridge. It builds to intensity and then explodes and it seems like this is what they tried to do every song on Louder Now but had the other flaws holding them back because this time it goes off without a single hitch. Another highlight is the punk song Catholic Knees and the bitter breakup anthem Everything must Go (which sounds a lot like the closer on Where You Want to Be but I'll let it slide since its on a different album). The only real downside to the album is the clunky Sink Into Me which just kind of wanders around (and let's face it, the timing of the song doesn't make sense at all!). However, other than that misstep its probably the highest point of Taking Back Sunday's pretty hit or miss catalog and a must listen for fans of pop and punk.
