New Found Glory (Photo Cred: Alie Krohn)

“It’s your own life, live it for yourself.” Although these aren’t the first lyrics of the curtain opening song “Better Off Dead” by New Found Glory, they are hidden nuggets found when sifting through the lines. I always love watching shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim, particularly because it is a location at the heart of rock music, and a local home to many of my band familiarities.

New Found Glory is one of those “high school bands” that I recall with the early exploration of self expression. Whatever the sentiments and genre categorization of the band may be through its years, ranging from pop-punk and alternative rock to melodic hardcore (of which the last is a new term to me and I’m still having difficulty understanding), there will always be those songs that take me back to when I was 15 or 16 when the sound of guitars and drums seemed to say everything that I couldn’t. Sometimes the lyrics spoke volumes, sometimes they were, quite honestly, meaningless words thrown together, the spectrum didn’t matter all that much, it was the freedom to interpret that created the impression.

After sitting on the set list for a long while before writing this review, I revisited it in recollection and realized the concert had one unique trait that I have never seen an artist do before. New Found Glory played their entire self-titled album from song one to song twelve during the main showcase. The disc was released at the beginning of high school for me in 2000 yet performed ten years later. Anytime you are familiar with an album you can easily find yourself singing the first line of the next song to come next between the two-second track-breaks. I don’t think I realized it at the time but this is exactly what happened, and the set list followed the progression from start to finish with “Ballad For The Lost Romantics.”

With the full New Found Glory album under wraps, the concert’s six-song encore set had been the longest that I have ever experienced. The band continued with a hodgepodge of songs released between 2002 and 2009. I can’t say I followed along with their career past high school graduation so their newest “Don’t Let Her Pull You Down” from Not Without a Fight, and “Hold My Hand” from Coming Home were new sounds for my orientation. Their fresh and quite younger fan base seemed to rally with them though. In the final minutes, after introducing the band, the headliners closed with their 2002 hit “My Friends Over You” from Sticks and Stones, a relative throwback for the class of 2004.

I don’t normally backtrack in concert reviews, especially when the runner up band is one of my favorites, but I must in this case since I can’t give written authority of the full set list of Saves The Day that night. I’m limited to a frenzied memory of their songs performed since for the most part I was entrenched in singing along to every word completely in the moment. I do remember my excitement that’s for sure, but I can’t tell you the play-by-play.

“This song will become the anthem of your underground…” The first words of the echoing “At Your Funeral” from Saves The Day’s 2001 album Stay What You Are instantly bring me back to nostalgia for my youth. The highlights, or at least the songs that I will forever badly sing/yell along to, included that single along with “Shoulder At The Wheel” from their album in 1999, and my first love of theirs, Through Being Cool.

Thanks to my brother I was always a few years ahead of the trends in relation to my peers. Most of the time I heard the songs bellowing from his stereo years before my friends made the realization of the bands’ presence. I’m not gonnna lie, it made me feel pretty cool back in the day when I was able to say I’ve known them for years! But “I’m through being cool…rather forget the days we spent than try to stay afloat in shallow waters…the world that’s flying by is slick and smooth, big waves of light…last night I dreamt you called from Costa Rica, go see the volcanoes, go see the rainforests, I’ll be fine by myself…” I’ll simple words, but in memory and music they are moments and chords unforgettable. At the risk of sounding cheesy thank you Saves The Day for the many times you saved my day.