While so many pop-punk bands turn out to be one hit wonders, Texan four-piece Bowling For Soup have proven to have more staying power than most. After scoring notable success with Drunk Enough To Dance and A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, they’re still out to spread the fun with this, their fifth major label album (and ninth in all).

The obvious thing to say would be ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, and it’s true the band haven’t strayed too far from a winning formula, sticking predominantly to a radio-friendly punk sound laced with tongue-in-cheek, name-dropping lyrics. Nonetheless, it could be said that they’re starting to show their age a little. Lead single ‘High School Never Ends’ warns their younger listeners that the grown-up world is “just as obsessed with who’s the best dressed and who’s having sex”, but unfortunately –while it’s an admittedly catchy song – they’re perhaps a little long in the tooth to be down with such kids these days.

Perhaps that’s why the album seems to include more of what are, relatively speaking, ballads – with several songs notching over four minutes, and slowing the pace down a bit. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re all more serious: as frontman Jaret Reddick puts it in the press release “there are at least 12 verses worth of total joy for every sort-of-sad chorus about an ex-girlfriend on this record” and that pretty much sums it up accurately.

Bowling For Soup have a knack of singing about unlucky losers in a humorous way, enlisting co-writing credits from Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and Stacy Jones (American Hi-Fi), that still puts a smile on your face. Maybe the joke’s getting a little old now, and the formula a bit over-done, but at least it’s a bit more cheerful than those emo-types and any band willing to put the fun back into punk rock deserve a warm welcome.
(3/5)