Taking Back Sunday with Colour Revolt

There is an urgency in Taking Back Sunday’s new self-titled album that is disarming but hardly unexpected. The Long Island, N.Y., quintet has honed its Pop/Punk sound to a razor’s edge over the past decade, but TBS’s latest iteration is a familiar blast from its past.

Taking Back Sunday’s eponymous fifth album marks the return of guitarist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper, who were members on TBS’s debut full-length, 2002’s Tell All Your Friends. Both left in 2003 to form Straylight Run. In a wild example of synchronicity, TBS drummer Mark O’Connell contacted Nolan and Cooper last year, hours after they had officially shelved Straylight Run.

“Mark had been thinking about this, and started talking to Adam (Lazzara) and Eddie (Reyes),” Nolan says. “He talked to Shaun and got in touch with me. That set the whole thing in motion and we started reconnecting and discussing the possibility. Maybe Mark knew we were wrapping up Straylight Run, but I don’t think so. It was strange timing.”

Although their split hadn’t been acrimonious, Nolan hadn’t spoken to either Lazzara or Reyes in years, but Nolan’s first conversations with his old bandmates were completely comfortable. More importantly, they clearly weren’t interested in rehashing old glories.

“Adam was very open to seeing where things would go,” Nolan says. “His goal was to make a really great Rock record, and that was exciting to me. If the goals had been about getting back to the old sound of the band, that would have been less exciting.”

All things considered, it’s natural to wonder how Taking Back Sunday has changed over the past dozen years. The sonic proof is the new album’s stark contrast to the stripped down Punk/Pop of Tell All Your Friends, from scorchers like “El Paso” and “Faith (When I Let You Down)” to the distinctly different “Money (Let It Go)” and atypically quiet but amazingly powerful left turns of the album’s brilliant closer, “Call Me In the Morning.” Perhaps it’s more appropriate to wonder what hasn’t changed.

“Once we got back together and started working on songs, it really felt just the same as when we were in Mark’s parents’ basement eight years ago,” Nolan says. “Someone would have an idea — “That’s cool, let’s work on that” — and someone has another idea and it snowballs until it becomes a song. It always happened quickly with us. It was just about finding that one idea to start with, and then we’d all get into it.”

This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2011.