Artist: Major League
Album: There’s Nothing Wrong With Me
Label: No Sleep Records
Genre: Rock

Seeing the name Major League pop up on iTunes when I click to listen to the band’s new record feels wrong. As long as I’ve been familiar with the band, Major League has represented that weird, pubescent period for hardcore-tinged pop-punk when the genre had to search for footing in a scene ruled predominantly by mall-core and neon-pop. Along with that era’s heavy hitters like I Call Fives, Casting Call, and With The Punches, Major League made goofy songs, goofy music videos, and goofy album artwork. Upon listening to the band’s new record, There’s Nothing Wrong With Me, it’s clear that 2010 is dead and buried, and the band is finally ready to turn the page into a new era.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: former vocalist Nick Trask is no longer in the band, and Brian Joyce has stepped up to perform the majority of the vocal duties. While There’s Nothing Wrong With Me might go down in history as the band’s first record without Trask, that description feels like a bit of a cop-out at face value. This is an entirely new Major League. Where 2012’s Hard Feelings opens with the glossy, Dookie-esque title track and the cookie-cutter ‘Defend Pop Punk’ jam “Walk Away,” There’s Nothing Wrong With Me drops the listener into the thick of their fuzzy new sound with the relentless “Wallflower.” The band has clearly taken cues directly from radio rock bands like Foo Fighters this time around, which shows in the more aggressive guitar lines and the decidedly more inspired rhythm section. “Wallflower” serves a good preview for the rest of the record; the majority of the album consists of mid-tempo rock songs with loud guitars, booming drums, and Joyce’s high-register snarl.

That’s not to say that the whole album sounds the same. The pacing of the record is saved by a few key tracks. “Kaleidoscopes” is a fantastic pop-punk song, and sounds the closest to what I was expecting from a follow-up to Hard Feelings. At this point in the record, it becomes clear that the band had every intention of recreating themselves upon Trask’s departure; the band could have opted to make an album that sounds a lot more like “Kaleidoscopes” and pleased everyone. The first half of the record comes to a close with “Montreal,” the surprisingly enjoyable acoustic song. Given a break from the powerful instrumentals, Joyce delivers his best vocal performance on the record and some of his best lyrics in “The progress I made is packaged with setbacks / Recovering junkie, I fuck up and relapse / Father, I’m so sorry if this breaks your heart.”

Major League’s decision to record There’s Nothing Wrong With Me with Philadelphia’s Will Yip is questionable at best. Yip is generally a good engineer, but nearly all of his recent work with pop-punk bands such as Man Overboard, Turnover, and Polar Bear Club makes me wonder why artists in the genre continue to run for his niche sound. Analog recording does wonders for effect-heavy bands like Balance & Composure and Pianos Become The Teeth, but on more straightforward rock and punk, like There’s Nothing Wrong With Me, things often sound cluttered and thin. “Just As I Am” serves as a great reminder that producer Will Yip engineered Balance & Composure’s The Things We Think We’re Missing, as the guitar tones and atmosphere present on the track sound identical to the producer’s work on that record. However, it sticks out like a sore thumb here, and it feels like Yip simply got bored and wanted to mess around on the board at least once before the recording process was over.

Despite its setbacks, There’s Nothing Wrong With Me is a solid record and proves that Major League still have creative juices in them after the lineup change. The transition to a new sound feels natural, like it’s what the band wanted to do all along, and Trask’s departure simply gave them an excuse to mix things up. With the new lineup set in stone and a record full of new songs to play on the road, I think it’s fair to expect great things out of the new and improved version of the band.

SCORE: 7.5/10
Review written by John Bazley (follow him on Twitter)

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John Bazley

John Bazley was raised in central New Jersey by the romantic aura of the Asbury Park beachfront, punk rock, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. He is still trying to figure all of this stuff out.

In addition to UTG, John has contributed to Alternative Press and Full Frequency Media. Follow him on Twitter for pictures of his dog.

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