With the release of Listen Up, New Found Glory finds themselves a year shy of their 30th anniversary and quite possibly putting out some of the best music of their monumental career. It’s the band’s 11th full-length, and their first with Pure Noise Records. Yes, the band has been around since 1997, and they were a key inspiration for a generation of modern pop punk bands. But this album doesn’t sound like a band resting on their laurels. They sound just as hungry now as back in the days when they were A New Found Glory.
The album starts with “Boom Roasted.”
It’s an anthem filled with the chunky melodic guitar riffs and anthemic choruses New Found Glory fans have grown to love. This high energy tune is a hell of a way to open up a new album. The group the delivers a nice one-two punch with “100%.” A life-affirming and inspirational anthem, it should be a crowd-pleaser when played live.
A common critique of of ’90s pop punk bands is that they don’t age gracefully. Hearing groups sing about high school love while making fart jokes when they’re in their late 40s and early 50s doesn’t quite hit the same way today than it did back then. You won’t hear that criticism with the songs on Listen Up. The members of New Found Glory have gone through personal struggles since they formed. This album acknowledges that, while celebrating the resilience and motivation to keep pushing through.
In fact, “Frankenstein’s Monster” directly addresses guitarist Chad Gilbert’s battle with aggressive metastatic cancer. It might be my favorite song the band has ever released. The imagery it conjures up is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
New Found Glory clearly wants to look forward with Listen Up.
However, songs like “Beer and Blood Stains” fondly recollect the band’s humble beginnings. The track is a love letter to Florida, the independent music scene that embraced them back then, and the memories forged along the way. It also has a more vintage NFG sound with riff-heavy guitars, singalongs, and even a hardcore breakdown.
Yes, in the beginning, the band played a little more fast, loose, and dangerous, but without that era, would New Found Glory be who they are today? I doubt it. Even when looking back, the overall theme of the album shines through with the lyric, “It’s good to be alive.”
When you’ve been a band for almost 30 years, it could be easy to go through the motions.
Many groups have released an uninspiring album just so their fans don’t forget about you. That’s not the case with Listen Up. Instead, it’s the most inspired album of New Found Glory’s career. Hey deliver some classic pop punk bangers, while also dipping into power pop territory with “Medicine.” It sounds like Matthew Sweet and Tom Petty wrote a pop punk song together. Even more, “Dream Born Again,” originally heard on NFG’s 2023 acoustic EP, gets a plugged in rendition.
When the dust settles on 2026, Listen Up will be one of my most listened-to albums.
I’ve been living in despair and anxiety and depression for too long. It weighs every part of my life down and makes it hard to see any positive linings. But I’m not going to ignore the bad going on in the world. In fact, I will continue to actively push back and let my voice be heard at every opportunity. That also means I’m allowed to feel joy, despite my anxiety. I truly believe one way to fight against the tyranny in our world is to freely experience joy and not be shy about it. Listen Up is the life-affirming album I need to power me through the darkest of times throughout 2026 and beyond. As the band says on the penultimate song, “You Got This.”