Like them or loathe them, Good Charlotte have certainly been right up there with the best at making their presence felt far outside of the constraints of the alternative rock scene they grew up in. Latest record ‘Cardiology’ arrives just over a decade later than their first full length – but only at the second attempt.
Good Charlotte have always been fantastic at delivering a party banger, and it’s when they deliver big, big pop-punk moments like ‘Counting the Days’ and ‘1979’, that they’re at their best – the latter is an acoustic twinged effort that is so upbeat it makes you want to tell a few ska bands to cheer the hell up, and the former is a great slice of bread and butter pop-punk mastery.
However, and it’s quite a big however, when the pace rolls off a little bit on the album, Cardiology tends to dip into dragging a little on the first few listens – and there will no doubt be a few curious listeners put off by songs like “Harlow’s Song (Can’t Dream Without You)”.
‘Grower’ should most definitely be on a list of words disallowed from album descriptions, but ‘Cardiology’ does take those few listens to make sense, and though there’s a few points where the production is so glossy that your eyes hurt, there’s still so much talent in the songwriting that a few studio evils can be forgiven.
Overall, Cardiology isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely anything but terrible. It’s hard to make a judgement on how it’ll sit with new audiences, but it’s worth looking into for anyone’s who’s been curious and enjoyed the band in the past – which is a sizeable percentage of the people in the western world who’ve ever turned on a radio.