New Found Glory Make The Most Of It With Their Acoustic Release

By Phil Hawkins

New Found Glory is anything but new to the pop-punk genre. If anything they are one of the more consistent and long running acts in the genre. They’ve been releasing their brand of pop-punk for more than twenty years while some of their contemporaries have either hung it up, changed line ups or taken an elongated hiatus.

Throughout the course of their career New Found Glory have released 10 albums, 4 cover albums, 3 EPs, 1 Christmas album, 1 live album, 1 Hits compilation, and now with the release of Make The Most Of It, an acoustic album (available now on Revelation Records).

Make The Most Of It could be considered a mixed bag of sorts. The first seven tracks are all original acoustic recordings while the last seven tracks are all live acoustic recordings spanning their career. It’s a solidly fluid offering that fans of the band will surely enjoy from start to finish.

The album kicks of with “Dream Born Again” which instantly presents that classic NFG sound that we have all come to enjoy and appreciate. The fact that it is “stripped down” in to it’s purest form is refreshing and feels like a natural progression for the band to take at this point in their career. That may seem like an unusual statement given the track has only been an acoustic track (at this time), but I would be curious to see how this track and the additional new tracks would transcend to a full fledged filled out piece with all the bless and whistles. “Mouth to Mouth” follows and yet again carries such a strong classic feel that makes it hard to believe that this is a new track.

“Get Me Home” carries a solid melody and is probably the most accessible of the new grouping of songs, but that doesn’t make it watered down or anything as it is truly a solid offering. “Watch the Lilies Grow” has a very somber feeling/tone to that is akin to “Boulders” from Coming Home.” The melancholic nature though creates a solid contrast against the preceding tracks giving the album a mature aspect that can sometimes be missed or overlooked in the pop-punk genre. “More Than Enough” is another solid fun track that would be a real crowd mover if it were to be fleshed out with the full band aspect as it fits the overall aesthetic that NFG has created in their music over the past 25 years.

“Kiss the Floor” and “Bloom” round out the first half of the album and the original recordings offered. While they are both good tracks they feel like they would easily get “lost” in a full length venture in a more “deep cut” sort of way as they just don’t seem to have the drive and energy that the other new tracks bring to the table.

From this point the album shifts and covers territory that if you’ve seen the band in a live setting before you may have encountered in some capacity as the remaining tracks are previously released tracks just in a stripped down acoustic fashion. Given the longevity of their career I would have liked to have seen a more diverse offering in this format. However, the “hits” they chose to include transcend beautifully in the acoustic setting. The tracks included are; “Understatement,” “All Downhill From Here,” “Dressed to Kill,” “The Story So Far,” “Failures Not Flattering,” “My Friend’s Over You” and “Hit Or Miss.” In addition to these being acoustic tracks they were also recorded live so there is the addition of the crowd being intertwined (think MTV Unplugged).

Overall, Make The Most Of It is a solid offering from a band that has spent many years cultivating and broadening their craft in so many ways without allowing things to become stale or redundant. It is not uncommon for some to wish or hope for an acoustic album so they can hear a reimagining of a beloved track, but the cool thing with this album is that it allows for the hopes of the adverse in, at least, an EP of the new recordings fully arranged with drums, bass and electric guitars that would allow them to transcend even further.

Make The Most Of It is available now on all major streaming and digital platforms or physical copies can be purchased via the band’s webstore.