With rippling, well-aimed, pop-styled prowess and tunefulness, the opening track, the title tune, comes off like a tightened-up U.S. teenage version of the Clean (the New Zealand band mostly adored for their ramshackle 1980’s pop, but I prefer their album “Vehicle” from 1990), with less arty angles. It’s a poetic play on shoreline bliss, with the insight that if, “You’re happy skipping stones” don’t bother swimming, even if you think you should. It’s akin to Robert Frost: take the less traveled path, they infer, don’t buckle under the weight of any impressions — stand tall and enjoy the moment. The wall-of-harnessed-speed “Might Be Broken” jets straight and hard out of the gates. Insistent and urgent, the theme might be being “broken and unemployed, depressed and a total mess,” but the vibe is neither hostile nor hollow. It reeks with hopefulness, concentrated into punk-pop slices and miles of memorable melody. Then they shift again, outfitting “Wrecking Ball” (no, not the Neil Young tune) with cowpunk credibility mixed with infectious honky-pop style. But the irony and insight keeps coming, full bore, in lyrical acknowledgements like, “It’s much easier to pass the time within a lie.” It’s that ease — living in a box of one’s own deceit — that keeps us fat and flattered, but lo and behold, the band wields the wrecking ball. Instead of foreshadowing impending mass destruction, the song seems to offer sweet carnage … a soft cushioned end to big falsehoods. “Considering” returns to puncturing guitar crunch aesthetics and Buzzcocks rambling gusto: meanwhile, the theme is leaving the adult, cluttered, annoying world behind, including phones, jobs, and frustrating midnight hours. School beckons, the morning begs us to stop dying in our well-worn lives, but then again, “considering never gets me nothing.” As always, one dictum holds true: talk minus action = nothing.

“Any Other Place” is equally stealthy and sly; the “sleeping” motif filters back into the lyrical terrain, alongside the ‘same old day, same old song’ vibes of “wasting” and “running out of time.” Yet, with tunes like this, such “waste” and ennui never felt so dizzying and pop jolted: the vervy beat makes the whole matter seem less like gray shades and more like rocket fuel for tomorrow’s possibilities. “Nothing Here” is tender but droll: you can feel the pulse drop with every verse as they unmask the vitriol they feel for people they actually imitate, unconsciously or not. I prefer the stiff, galloping rhythm and unfussy fusillades of “Na Na La La,” which they deliver tight and clean like XTC stripped down and streamlined in marshaled beats and echoey, organ-drenched choruses. The soaring “Weight” actually, and I mean this is in a positive sly way, reminds me of my closeted affection for The Outfield: it has those limber, shiny FM radio, neo-Police guitar lines, soaring-dove vocals, and perpetual rhythmic no-waste crispness. In turn, they wax rural and bucolic on “Mazie,” a heartfelt song hungry with sentimentality that recounts an odd religious girl who sticks to her saints and icons even as the world of burlesque and booze beckon. She balances notions of heaven with rough-hewn mouthfuls of foul words and cigarette swirls. “Walking is Tough” sticks to apple pie revelry rock, though don’t expect simpleton fare. They deliver injunctions against delusions, empty plans, and closing doors on the dawning of the day. They’re tired of everybody talking about the fights we face, and they’re even tired of rhymes. The poem may feel like old timey evocations, but the content is really about tossing aside the same-same patterns and forging new lives. “Warm Soon” returns to muscular non-stop power pop, powered by razory guitars, sinewy vocals, and a nod to all their brethren from The Boys to Maximo Park. Did I mention they even have an uncanny resemblance to the Vulgar Boatmen in brief places?

With agitated angst and scratchy vocals on par with Feederz and Jawbreaker, these no-bullshit punks produce a vinyl 7″ single reverberating with rancor (“White Lies”) bottled up deep inside, where the pain convenes with headaches (“just shut up!”, they yell) and the detritus of blown-up relationships, including frustrating blame games. The more moderate “Out” really does echo early Jawbreaker (before the throat surgery and major label mismatch). It’s a medium paced, slightly melodic undertaking steaming with off-hand poetry like “bartenders look like aristocrats” as it reveals the frustration of dealing with bar staff who value hobnobbing with ladies instead of comraderie and drink duty. “Slanted Houses” pushes a bit heavier, buried in nostalgia-deep ennui as the narrator witness the gentrification of his aging friends – “settling down and selling your soul.” The late night heathen carnality in “ghetto houses” is gone forever. One friend edits the memories in newly gained perspectives, the other longs for a core truth of Kerouac-like proportions. “Two” waxes along the same burnt edge of Jawbreaker too, with crunch and mid-tempo punk sways. It’s all about being left, leaving, and longing: in essence, it’s about loving the girl that shacks up elsewhere but is still “split in two.” In a Zen moment, the narrator utters, “Sometimes it takes a change to break a fall.” He might hurt, he might hunger, but he believes, as he consoles himself, that she’ll known when to stop pretending. Meanwhile, the tune “What We Had” sounds the proletariat alarm. He’s read the leftist books, earned the lowly wages, hears the change jingling in the angry street, but he doesn’t turn to Marx or overturn the government. Instead, he wants to get closer to the real meaning behind his desires … to connect to others, I suppose, in a Walt Whitman moment.