Neck Deep - Neck Deep Review

Neck Deep’s fifth-studio album is a sturdy, solid yet snoozy offering to the pop-punk genre.

If Neck Deep’s fans were still sloping around the back corners of a HMV flicking through the poster rack at the age of 15, this album would be a triumph. The problem is, we’ve all grown up. While the five-piece prove here that they can make a darn-good pop-punk record and chime rhymes through their lyrics like they’re spinning cotton-candy, in returning to their roots (perhaps because of much criticism of their previous LA-infused lofty album ‘All Distortions Are Intentional’) they’ve sacrificed diversity, exploration and experimentation. There’s nothing here I’ve not heard before.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a good record, and perhaps their consistency and loyalty to genre is refreshing in a world of constant change or, as Still Listening writer Freddie Buckley puts it, in a world where ‘everything is a fusion these days’. The band gave up glimmering big-city beaches and returned to Wrexham to record this in search for their original sound. As their members have chopped and changed dramatically, perhaps it’s a miracle they can access such graceful nostalgia through those ‘sonic signatures in the mix that even I can’t really put my finger on that just make it Neck Deep’, as lead-singer Ben Barlow puts it. He’s right: the choruses are still catchy (snidey track ‘Sort Yourself Out’ and pre-released single ‘Heartbreak Of The Century’ come to mind) and the same formula is used throughout, but the band bumble along contently rather than working through any of the dark anger evident in ‘The Peace And The Panic’. Another key difference in comparison to this 2017 album: at least that cover art was bearable to look at.

There are a few moments where the album is close to bursting out of the set creative structure. ‘We Need More Bricks’ re-iterates a message of collective responsibility and action, whilst ‘Take Me With You’ constitutes an exploration of intimacy in our technological-driven era. Track ‘This Is All My Fault’ continues this theme through humorously exploring the anguish of human relationship failure; ‘I'm thinking of building you a perfect new replica, it thinks and it feels like me, but it's not as pathetic, yeah’. How did they anticipate the exact plot of Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal’s Hollywood movie ‘FOE’? Eighth track on the album ‘They May Not Mean To (But They Do)’ takes famous verse by melancholic post-war poet Philip Larkin and punches out a fantastic first verse - this, at least, was unexpected. Neck Deep are at their best when they explore the weird and wacky, like old tune ‘Kali Ma’ written in ode to the band’s favourite video game. Disillusionment with late-capitalism and modern romance is spun into happily cheesy pleas to aliens and song titles like ‘moody weirdo’.

An age-old question of the genre intertangles pace and space – when all the songs rush first with jangling guitars and rapid drums, where does the listener breathe, stretch out in the space? No song pushes four minutes, and though the track order is sensible, the lack of diversity does nothing to provide differentiation between the titles. It’s not that I don’t have a favourite track, it’s that I felt I wasn’t able to pick. However, the final minute of ‘It Won’t Be Like This Forever’, races through impressively rhythmical lyrics and then peels off instrumentational layers to at least shake the listener from their imposed daydreaming. On the second listen, catchy chorus from ‘Take Me With You’ seemed to infect each song, exposing iterative melodies that are great, but recycled and reused. The realisation came to me timidly, like a teacher catching a pupil cheating on an exam.

Guitarists Matt West and Sam Bowden, bassist and producer bassist Seb Barlow, percussionist Matt Powles and frontman Ben Barlow have created a decent album - not their worst, not their best. Perhaps the ethos of self-deprecation throughout the album (‘I'm a dumbstruck, dumbfuck, head like a dump-truck’) works as a protective wall, so it’ll hurt a little less when the critics highlight the holes and poke at the frayed edges of this solid but snoozy offering.