New Atlantic, The Streets, The Sounds, and The Love

With The Streets, The Sounds, and The Love, the debut full-length from Jersey’s New Atlantic, the band lunges out of nowhere to join the crowd of thankfully-growing emo-pop bands currently smiling their way across America. New Atlantic run with that small-ish crew of bands like Mae, Saves The Day, or Longwave; they rock like emo bands of yore, but there’s scarcely a frown in sight, much less a sardonic T-shirt or suicidal-sounding singer. These are songs that keep their heads held high, more confident and hopeful than a club full of Get Up Kids.

And that’s a damn good thing. The guitars roar and shimmer like Jimmy Eat World at their least melancholy (“Cold-Hearted Town”), the vocals echo The Stills (“What It’s Like To Feel Small,” which starts off a dead ringer for “Let’s Roll”) or Saves The Day (and The Outfield, believe it or not; see the title track), and a few tracks (“Wire and Stone”) even get dance-y like the Killers used to pre-Sam’s Town. Granted, this album probably isn’t destined to set the world on fire, but even still, it’s pretty good.

One caveat, though: don’t listen too closely to the lyrics. More often than not, New Atlantic comes off like one of those mid-’80s pop bands like a-Ha, whose grasp of the English language was shaky enough to shrug off the cheesiness of the words; you’d just smile, shake your head, and figure, “hell, it probably sounds badass in Swedish, anyway.” If you can forgive some of the cheesy lyrics, though (see “Now That You’re Gone” for a prime example), and just enjoy Giovanni Gianni’s soaring vocals and Chris Hindley and Matthey Sztyk’s Saves The Day-esque guitars, The Streets… is a fun listen.

Oh, and the band turns the standard way of doing things in Rock World upside-down and saves the two best tracks for last. “The Ever After” takes a different tack than most of the rest of the songs on here, aiming for a more theatrical, retro-pop-y sound, like a cross between Cursive and The Stereo. After the full on pop-rock of the rest of the disc, it’s a nice switch. Then “The Streets, The Sounds, The Love” closes things out with a churning, blazing ball of fervent pop-rock fire, complete with awesome gang-chant vocals. Maybe it’s the beaten-down arena rocker I was back in high school peeking back out, but I can’t help but smile when I hear it.