Bright and Early are here and are definitely ready to alienate. The Jersey/Philly pop-punk combo just goes up and calls out things like All Time Low, Cobra Starship and Glamour Kills on "Something Personal," the second track on their most recent effort, Louder Than Words, ensuring themselves a bullshit association-free lifestyle. The song's title is parodic, a joke which, if you're on Punknews (and you are, of course), you probably don't get. Alternative Press readers will recognize it as a play on the title of ATL's last full-length, Nothing Personal.

So, Bright and Early have a bone to pick with fashion-conscious, tangentially punk-influenced constructs, but the thing is, the style of pop-punk they play isn't the most insane departure from those bands (maybe a little more rock-oriented). Well, not Cobra Starship's ridiculous, neon dance-pop anyway...not by any means. There are moments on here that show the potential to produce something far smarter and more creative than any part of the scene they're calling out, however, as the beginning of the playful, angsty opener "The Good Things End" attests to; it's pretty much in the Wonderland-era Forgive Durden realm until the simpler, power-chord-pumped chorus.

Mid-EP track "Slow One" may be named like the band never got past its "working title" stage, but it doesn't play out that way. It's a bold, big song with balladic tendencies, but it has none of the cringe-worthy traits one might expect to hear from a band of this style playing this type of a song. Then again, there isn't much jumping out terribly positively, besides the huge, smooth production courtesy of John Naclerio (Polar Bear Club, the Forecast, Steel Train). There's a pinch of aggression in the melodies of closer "Nik Nac" that hints at something better, but it's not quite there yet.

Louder Than Words is ballsy to a degree, but musically, it needs to be a little more so.

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The Good Things End
Something Personal