I’ll admit that I’m always a little dubious about pop punk releases as I feel they can lyrically fall into the cliché traps of being mad at your home town or being angry at some girl who turned you down. However, Toronto quintet Like Pacific avoid this with vigour – but still familiar enough to connect to – providing lyrical themes as they bring ‘Distant Like You Asked’ to the table of the pop punk party. With “stay pissed” as a casual motto, the band manage to channel their frustrations of life by lighting a fresh spark in an arguably slow-moving genre.

An instrumentally fun album, a consistent and rhythmic brash pace is set that the record rides on and helps the delivery of the insanely strong vocals from frontman Jordan Black. Opener ‘Richmond’ plunges you straight into their infectious energy and is followed by the first single released from this album, ‘Distant’, which displays the power of the cleverly layered vocals. The ten tracker is without hitch and delivers a recurring sound reminiscent of good old early ’00s emo pop punk.

‘22a’ marks the album’s halfway point and features softer, twinkly guitars which mix well with the raspy yells in this track. ‘Dim’ arrives as the intricately instrumentally timed penultimate track, this song holds a crowd pleasing build up towards the end and will definitely be big hit live. Finally, ‘Scared’ closes the very balanced record with frontman Jordan Black admitting “I’m a sucker for repetition” in the chorus. Well, in this genre there’s nothing wrong with that!

‘Distant Like You Asked’ is a fresh pinnacle in this genre and holds exciting new young life. It not only demonstrates solidly-planted instrumental themes but also displays their ability to delve into the exploration of lyrical fields and is an all-round fantastic effort.

4.5/5

‘Distant Like You Asked’ by Like Pacific is out now on Pure Noise Records.

Like Pacific links: Facebook|Twitter

Words by Phoebe Messenger (@kangaezu_)