Yellowcard Band • Page 4

For some reason I think this album will come out towards the very end of the year, maybe Nivember

 

Yeah, but 1) that was on a different label, and 2) releasing outside of the summer arguably did them a huge disservice. I bet this rollout will be faster.

 

I have pretty high hopes for this album. I wasn't a huge fan of LAS. Will be interesting to see what this ends up sounding like.

 

Both fair points. You're probably right. I remember the release process with Lift A Sail being painfully slow. Southern Air I believe we got a single as early as June (?), but Im pretty sure that recording process was completed earlier.

 

Just checked: They finished recording Southern Air on April 8 and released Always Summer on May 22.

 

So Sum 41 just signed to Hopeless Records. How great would a YC/Sum 41 tour be?

 

really great!! Sum 41 is doing lots of festival dates over here in Europe, YC not so much.
If it happens then I would be guessing 2017 or maybe fall/winter 2016, depending on when the new YC album will be released...and on when the new Sum 41 album will be released!

 

I feel like they could still get it out by late August. Yellowcard has such an association with being "summer music" for so many people. Just seems like smart marketing to go with a shorter rollout. I don't ever understand why bands and labels opt for long rollouts, though. Doesn't make any sense to me in this era.

 

I've wondered the same thing for quite some time now. The whole "teaser" appeal doesn't really make sense to me in the modern day market. Long waits, to me, can actually have the opposite effect and kill off the excitement

 

Absolutely. I mean, they still have to master the thing and get the artwork and stuff, but that's a fraction of the time that usually passes between an album announcement and release. I think the only thing that actually takes long enough to justify a long rollout is vinyl, which people are generally okay with waiting for.

I agree that a long rollout can kill excitement. Like, I feel like my excitement for that Hotelier album peaked back in March. I still want to hear it, but I'm not like rabidly excited for it at this point.

 

The URL here is Yellowcard.666.

 

Take this with a grain of salt since I can't find the webpage at the moment, but I remember finding an interview with Ryan and he said he wanted to bring something new to the Slam Dunk festival at the end of the month.

 

I love this band's entire discography aside from Lift A Sail. Thank god this album will sound nothing like it. I appreciate LAS for what it is - and musically it's interesting and technical, but I just do not like it at all. I thought the band was poised to release their best album in LAS (before hearing any tracks, basically just based off of how good Southern Air was), here's to hoping this is that record for them, although they don't need to prove anything at this point in their career.

 

Let me just say again that I do not comprehend the dislike for Lift a Sail. Might be the most bizarre close-to-consensus opinion I've ever seen on this site or AP. Like, why if you like this band's sound do you not like that album? I don't get it.

 

It's just because of this! It's slow, has less power, the violin is almost gone, the great drum fills aren't there, and I miss the great vocal led bridges.
I don't hate this album though, and I don't think it's bad music, but it's just not for me. I really like "Transmission Home", "One Bedroom", "Illuminate", "Lift a Sail", and "California" though.

I'm sure YC8 will be fucking great and everybody will like it again.

 

Admittedly, I don't know all that much about the individual processes that occur between mixing/mastering and the release. Obviously there is production/etc of the physical album, but a digital release is something that I can't imagine taking months to prepare.

What you described with Hotelier is essentially what I experienced with Lift A Sail. Nothing against the band at all, because I ended up loving the album, but I think the time between the album being finished and released was entirely too long. When it came out, it was more of a "oh wow it actually came out today" instead of "I can't wait to hear this!".

The album production cycle they had been on with Hopeless prior to that was much more interactive and exciting, I think. Hopefully they get back to that...which would line a single up for maybe the last Friday in June? We'll see.

 

It has taken the album a while to settle with me. I think coming off of Southern Air might have made the transition a bit worse, or more difficult. Southern Air was classic summer Yellowcard. LP was at his best, the band wrote some really killer summer punk/alternative/whatever you want to categorize it as tunes. Think of songs like Rivertown Blues, the title track, etc.

The transition to Lift A Sail was extremely abrupt coming after an album like that. So initially I was really taken aback and didn't know what to think.

If there is one thing that I still can't settle on, or won't settle with me, it's the bridges of most of the songs. I just don't know what it is, but they are dead to me. Maybe it's the lack of lyrics, i'm not sure. Nothing against the band, because they were trying something new, but for my personal taste it leave me waiting for more.

Anyway, the album has grown tremendously on me over the past few months. It has a place in Yellowcards catalog and has really settled in for me. I'm glad it did.

 

Would find this hard to accomplish since they just finished recording on May 8th. But possible that they will play a new song despite not having released a single.

 

LAS is a good album but it lacks nearly everything that I like about Yellowcard. LP's departure still hurts. Who's doing drums for the new record?

 

Looks like Nate Young from Anberlin.

 

What you're both saying is basically that it was slower/was less punk-driven, which is true. It is not a pop-punk album in any way. But, I mean, what do you want from the band at this point? Southern Air was the perfection of that sound. Everything--the summer soundtrack elements, the drums, the big bridges, the end of youth feel, the pop-punk choruses--they could not have done that better if they had tried.

To me, Lift a Sail isn't jarring or abrupt at all: it's the natural "moving on" moment, from all of the above. They didn't have LP anymore, so they weren't going to be as punk-influenced; Ryan had gone through some serious shit so it wasn't going to be an album waxing poetic about youth; they had a new member with electronic leanings, so those sounds were going to sneak in; they'd done the "summer soundtrack" record three or four times before and they wanted to do something else. To see people say stuff like "it has nothing I loved about Yellowcard" is odd to me. I thought it evolved their sound and lyrical style to a more grown up place without losing the melodies, the musicality, or the emotion that always made them special.

I guess to you I'd ask: what are you hoping for from the new record? The band has said it sounds nothing like Lift a Sail, but I seriously doubt they go back to the sound of WYTTSY/SA either. Will you be happy if it's another evolution? Or do you want them to be a pop-punk band?

 

Great post and I pretty much agree with everything you said. To answer your question: I really don't know. I think much of what I "like" about Yellowcard is habitual -- I associate them with my childhood summers and pop-punk. Lift a Sail has grown on me over the past few months and has become associated with the last few years of tremendous change in my life. And I have grown to really love that record.

So I really don't know exactly what I am hoping for on this new record at all.

 

I know people get older and their taste changes. I appreciate that. To each his own. But for me this never happened.
I still listen to the same I did back then, when blink-182 was huge and pop punk was at its peak.
This year has been great so far and shown me even more that I didn't outgrew this music. The new blink song is awesome, Yellowcard, Billy Talent, Sum 41, etc. are releasing new albums, and even the new Good Charlotte songs are great. I'm still super happy when I'm listening to this kind of music and it has never changed.
So yeah, I hope for more oldschool YC.
Pop music and slower songs had me never really satisfied.

 

"Habitual" is definitely a good way of putting it. I think a lot of people listen to this band for nostalgic purposes. For me, there aren't many records that are more tied to a time or place than Southern Air was. Ocean Avenue is that record for a ton of people. I think Lift a Sail for me arrived at the perfect time. I was done with college, married, and living in the "real world." It resonated more than a third installment in the WYTTSY/SA series would have done. I recognize that didn't happen for a lot of people, but I think, at some point, you have to let it happen or let the band go.

I respect that you like pop punk still, but bands grow and change, even if your music taste doesn't. Can we even get an old school Yellowcard album without LP? Like, is that a realistic possibility? Is an album with a seven-minute Yellowcard song going to be a pop-punk record? Probably not.