Recently, I did something my younger self thought he could never do: I reached out to an old friend. You see, our friendship quietly collapsed a decade ago. For years, I carried the wreckage around like a curse. I sulked, moped, and grew to hate myself. I was entirely convinced that my actions (or inaction) caused the relationship to deteriorate. But when we finally sat down and caught up, the heavy illusion shattered. It wasn’t some melodramatic tragedy. Instead, we were just two people on different paths. The only real drama was the exhausting, self-destructive narrative I had been spinning in my own head.
What does that personal baggage have to do with the band ME. and their debut album, All Good Things? Well, absolutely everything.
To understand the weight of All Good Things, you have to look at the architectural bones of the band itself. ME. includes two foundational former members of Taking Back Sunday, guitarist Eddie Reyes and drummer Mark O’Connell. That band is practically infamous for decades of documented lineup drama and semi-public feuds. Yet when Reyes and O’Connell finally reconnected away from the chaotic machinery of their former past, they discovered a stark, liberating truth: There was no real drama between them.
Getting back into a room together wasn’t a tactical business proposition or nostalgic rage bait. It was just two close friends catching up, clearing the air, and effortlessly channeling their shared history into creating something entirely new. That chemistry became the building blocks for a full band that features Chicago-based vocalist and guitarist Mike Jansen and bassist Neal Amiruddin. The record is proof the friends’ alchemy had never really disappeared.
Musically, All Good Things is unashamedly a pop-punk/emo record not too far removed from Reyes and O’Connell’s previous band.
The songs feature all the familiar trading of massive guitar hooks and driving rhythm sections that defined the genre’s golden era. However, it completely avoids the exhausting trap of cheap nostalgia. Although we hear an entirely new band using the flourishes of modern production, the album is very much cut from the same cloth as Louder Now and Tidal Wave. Those two records represent distinctive eras in Taking Back Sunday’s history: one at the height of their commercial popularity, the other representing later-era maturity.
On paper, ME. could’ve easily turned into a collection of aging men wearing youth-culture costumes, trying to recapture the angst that made them famous. Instead, All Good Things presents the band through the weathered lens of adulthood, something pop-punk fans of a certain age can identify with.
The riffs, wit, and transparency are all there, but at its core, ME. reckons with what it actually means to grow up.
The opener, “Special,” sets that tone early. I’ve wrestled with the particular ache of losing something you can never fully get back, and this track nails it. “Grown Man” then takes a different approach. The song faces the harder, scarier work of letting your guard down after you’ve already been burned.
By the time “Bloodsport” and “Sun Poison” show up, the record has fully shed any pretense of being a simple Emo Night throwback. After all, navigating complex relationships and surviving the quiet aftermath of your twenty-something decisions isn’t always as easy as power chords and dueling vocals. Because of this grounded maturity, the listening experience is profoundly rewarding, especially as someone who grew up in the genre’s heyday.
All Good Things is explosive and cathartic without sacrificing its weight.
The tracks feel honest in a way most bands lose access to this many years past their commercial peak. If I have one gripe, it’s that I wanted more of the record’s rougher edges. “Nuzzo” flashes some genuinely cool, heavy chugging and a flicker of snarky, unfiltered lyricism, and it’s a reminder these guys can still bite when they want to. But moments like that are the exception rather than the rule. The record spends most of its runtime in a hopeful, reconciliatory register, and there were stretches where I found myself wishing things got angrier.
ME. stands out as a fascinating anomaly in today’s alternative landscape. Plenty of their peers from the mid-2000s scene are still touring the same old grudges and dressing up in unresolved resentment. The band does something rarer by having the songs track a real arc, one that takes them from conflict through confrontation and dissociation to something like acceptance. More importantly, it’s what accountability sounds like.
Listening to All Good Things felt intensely personal to me.
Not only did it mean revisiting a genre I outgrew years ago, but it also mirrored the exact relief I felt when I reconnected with my own past. For me, the album isn’t really about Reyes and O’Connell finding their way back to Taking Back Sunday. Nor is it an epitaph for what was lost. It’s about them finding their way back to each other, the same quiet, undramatic reunion I had with my old friend. It’s proof of how beautiful life can be when you finally stop fighting old wars.
To purchase All Good Things in various formats, please visit thebandme.com