Re-emerging after an extended hiatus,
Boys Like Girls recapture the euphoria of falling in love with pop music for the first time on their exuberant fourth album, 2023's
Sunday at Foxwoods. The Massachusetts emo-pop outfit initially hit the TRL jackpot in 2007 with their single "The Great Escape" off their self-titled debut. That led to a duet with
Taylor Swift on 2009's
Love Drunk, a coup that helped the album crack the Top Ten of the Billboard 200. Nonetheless, an ever-changing musical landscape brought challenges as the band (who were all in their early twenties when they started out) matured. Following a foray into country-tinged rock on 2012's
Crazy World, they decided to take a break. In the meantime, lead singer
Martin Johnson embarked on a solo career, co-penning songs for a bevy of name artists and delivering two of the more criminally underappreciated pop albums of the past decade as
the Night Game. Those records found
Johnson building upon the driving guitar pop of
Boys Like Girls, blending in sleek adult-contemporary and album rock aesthetics. It's an addictive vibe he brings to
Sunday at Foxwoods, an album recorded at his Nashville studio that finds the band consciously looking back on their youth, waxing poetic over past rock glories, and yet trying to forge a more thoughtful path forward as adults. They explicitly address their humble punk beginnings on "The Outside," a ringing ode to the early-aughts rock scene, Dickies and Chucks included. One of the more magical aspects of the sound
Johnson has embraced since the band started is his affection for big '80s pop hooks and production, an aesthetic that finds him evoking the dance-rock of
the Police on "Language" and a synthy,
Sammy Hagar-era
Van Halen wallop on the infectious "Blood and Sugar." All of these songs are also expertly rendered, mixing pounding club beats right next to searing rock-guitar riffs and sharp slices of day-glo keyboards. With
Sunday at Foxwoods,
Boys Like Girls have made an album of rise-to-the-occasion anthems that play like the soundtrack to their own coming-of-age movie. ~ Matt Collar
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