Playlouder - Music is the Network

I wouldn't expect much from a band named after a Lagwagon cover of an LL Cool J song about taking a dump. Who would? But these self-assured Livornese chaps have enough up their sleeve to make for a fresh, engaging and sometimes surprising record.

While they claim a broad musical spectrum and a whole tapestry of influences, it's safe to say the biggest market for 'Helpless' is going to be fans of California and New Jersey pop punk. The anthemic 'Redemption' is up there with Saves the Day's best, and the emotastically-titled 'Letters From September' is the natural meeting point between Blink 182 and Idlewild. 

'Little Alice', with its stop-start power chords, has all the urgency of The Offspring's 'Self Esteem', and yet with the poetic broken English of the lyrics, it's all the more interesting:

“Your body is like a bar; / No one knows who’s been there... With your innocent malice / You drown yourself in a sweetish and dense river. / Fuck off everything!”

(As a lead in to the bridge, a rallying call of “Fuck off everything!” is pretty expertly pop punk.)

Also, with lines like “Incomprehensions can make you suffer more than other pains. / I know this new world; the only thing I have to thank God [for] / is the day I first met your smile,” Back One Out demonstrate an impressive ability to squeeze trickily-scanning sentences into classic hooks.

The bleak but appealing tricolour cover art is symbolic of the stylish mishmash of recognisable influences in the music, but also the themes of struggle and desperation which give the album more depth than many scenic equivalents.

Detractors would say it's nothing new, and that all pop punk music sounds the same, and that Back One Out therefore have little to offer the 21st century, but what those Philistines must accept is that classical music all sounds the same to some people, as does house music to others, and so on, and so on. 

So take it from someone who knows: Back One Out's 'Helpless' is a class-A dose of vibrant, virulent pop punk, better in its field than anything coming out of England at the moment, and equal to anything coming out of America.