Part 1
In April of 2006, I was 12 years old. I felt that I needed to rebel out of my interests because I was just a few weeks away from being a *gasp* TEENAGER. That being said, I was the opposite of a rebellious child up until that point, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to do that. I wasn’t about to pull the phase a lot of kids go through where you pretend you’re not into cartoons and Pokemon and video games for a couple years before you figure out doing that is incredibly dumb and go back to liking what you like. Around that time, I started growing my hair out as a way of expressing myself (if you’re one of the lucky few friends who have seen pictures, you know how bad it was. 12-year-old me was not the most fashionable). One of the few ways I chose to rebel was to switch up my music taste.
It was right in this time frame that “MakeDamnSure” was quickly gaining traction on its way to being Taking Back Sunday‘s biggest single ever. One day in the car, on the way to or from school, the song came on as I was channel surfing, and I instantly fell in love. I didn’t know what the song was talking about, or who Taking Back Sunday even was, but my little mind was blown. Months later I heard all of Louder Now from a friend who had the album, and it stuck with me. The opening riff of “What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?,” Adam Lazzara and Fred Mascherino’s harmonies on “Liar [It Takes One To Know One],” and even the softer acoustics of “Divine Intervention” all connected with me. This directly fed into my music interest of emo, pop-punk, and alternative rock in high school. I got a haircut freshman year, though. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat on these things.
Part 2
In October of 2011, I was 18 years old. I had graduated high school the previous Spring and was now a *gasp* COLLEGE STUDENT. I still wasn’t rebellious, but I did have a much broader music taste. Louder Now had been a heavy hitter in my music rotation for a few years, but I had started listening to it less frequently as my musical tastes traveled elsewhere. I was a member of the Music Industry Management Association at Ferris State University, only a few months into getting my degree in Music Industry Management. As part of the program, we hosted a Fall concert called Autumn Alive.
It just so happens that the artist chosen to perform 2011’s Autumn Alive was Taking Back Sunday. I remember a lot of things about that day. I remember loading in equipment and laying plywood where the stage was going to be built. I remember waking up at 6am and not getting to bed until 2:30am. But most of all I remember the songs from Louder Now that the band played. There had been two albums released between Louder Now and October 2011 (2009’s New Again and 2011’s Taking Back Sunday), so there were only four songs from the album featured on the set list. Regardless, it reignited my interest in the band and reminded me of how much Louder Now meant to me. Mascherino had long left the band, but every second of those four songs kicked just as much ass as I remembered. Another thing I remember from that concert is that I could barely walk the next day since I had been on my feet for 20 hours. That detail is less fun.
Part 3
It’s April of 2016. I’m 22 years old, and I’m a *gasp* YOUNG ADULT. Today marks 10 years since Louder Now was first released. I’m now able to look back and see how great the album was from a more technical standpoint. Eric Valentine’s production is perfectly balanced. Mascherino and Eddie Reyes’ guitar work gives the album heart, Matt Rubano’s bass line gives that heart a beat, and Mark O’Connell remains a severely underrated drummer from the mid 2000s. All 11 songs are great, and the album works so well as a cumulative experience. Louder Now gave Taking Back Sunday their biggest hit, but the whole album is on the same level as “MakeDamnSure.”
More than that though, Louder Now takes me back in time. It takes me back 5 years ago to when I was a college kid experiencing what Taking Back Sunday can do in concert and bringing me back into their music. And of course it brings me back 10 years ago, when my hair had just started to grow long and I wasn’t quite sure what I had found on the radio. I knew it was going to be important, though.