um feel free to just gloss over this

alright so brand new eyes is great so i have to make a really bad blog post about it.
um compared to their last 2 albums, singles are tighter and better and more singalong, the 1 ballad is acoustic and properly restrained, the filler is a lot more interesting.
musically they sorta combined the formulaic sound of their 1st, the superpop sound of their 2nd, and tweaked it a bit. biggest change here is that they have learned that not EVERY SINGLE SONG has to be close to full energy, and that sometimes acoustic guitars work better than electrics
biggest progression though is w/ the lyrics i think, i guess hayley learn that there is more to poppunk than being Avril Lavigne (acutally this is already apparent on Riot!, but it is much better done now), but yeh nearly breaking up means they have less U2-platitudes and more Looking Up/Where the Lines Overlap, and overall there is less repetitious textbook angst

so yeh everything is better this time round, though the lack of guitars doing anything other than fairly predictable riffs/chords/PM chords is holding them back imo.