Last year's Nothing About Me offered an inkling as to what Stickup Kid could perpetrate. They're all about mellow, laid-back pop-punk: Nothing too spectacular, just a nice, edgy-yet-simple incarnation of punk on the table. As the name suggests, Future Fire demonstrates how far they've come to realizing their potential and it adds a great deal of credit to their name. This record discloses exactly why Stickup Kid should be going onto bigger and better things very soon.
As an opener, "Lost" could throw listeners for a loop, as it's the typical pop-punk beat until the end picks up the pace and then pushes the rest of the record in a slightly different direction. I've found a lot of disjoint and musical disconnection, with quite a few pop-punk records lately, but just like Hostage Calm and The Story So Far, Stickup Kid maintains a pace that adds flavor, and at times, flashiness to their sound. When they go faster, with skatepunk vibes intact like on "The Depths of Me," they handle it sweetly. Tony Geravesh's vocal work is a tad generic but he's clean and unveils the best of Stickup Kid's sound.
The anthemic and catchy "Keeping My Distance" breathes life into the band's notion of rejecting the materialistic things in life. There's something about their music that, while not the most innovative, is far from a superficial and arbitrarily poppy sound that'll bore to death. Curtis Wallace and Bo McDowell's guitars solidify their musicianship. The clauses on growing up and the leases on life are what Stickup Kid throw in with a distinct California flavor. There are a couple unsettling tracks that make it slightly difficult to recoup the album's essence but when a song like "Through The Night" imprints so well, it makes the weaker tracks more forgettable.
Stickup Kid craft longer songs here and it's nice to hear that exploration. They've adapted a more astute take on the genre and "Gotten Away" shows this, with its ballad-esque feel that crescendoes nicely. The dodgy "Wasted" is counteracted by a fitting end in "Tailwind." Stickup Kid have gone from meddling skater punks to a blossoming band. Impending speculation or not, this album's sure to bring quite a few eyes to the fore and it's imminent. Stickup Kid are out of the dugout and reiterating that they're here to play ball.