The pop punk revival these last few years has been a lot of fun as a child of that era. A new generation of musicians learning the power that three crunchy guitar chords, fast hard-hitting drums, and a disaffected sneer against adolescent frustration can hold. Most have even shacked up with blink-182’s Travis Barker, one of the principles responsible for that whole sound, to some degree in hopes that proximity to once-bountiful gold dust can rub off on themselves.
Yet, I also can’t help but feel a lot of this new generation – KennyHoopla, Yungblud, Meet Me at the Altar, to name but a few – are all copying from the same sheets, the same canonised touchstones. blink, Dookie-era Green Day, maybe Smash-era The Offspring or Riot!-era Paramore if they’re feeling really adventurous. Whilst I’m not going to pretend like the scene was massively diverse (sonically or in the racial/sexual/gender make-up of its acts), there were other artists from the time worthy of being mined for inspiration.
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Northern Ireland three-piece CHERYM, though also worshipping at the blink-Day altar, take a slightly different approach. Whilst others fixate on the same scene hallmarks, presumably because they’re the ones who have received some semblance of coolness re-evaluation over the decades, CHERYM are a little less concerned with the cred which comes from proving they too loved Enema of the State.
Instead, guitarist Hannah Richardson, bassist Nyree Dawn, and drummer Alannagh Doherty (all three take vocals) display a major affection for the TRL/Kerrang! subset of acts which proliferated throughout the early-00s and were significantly more pop than punk. I’m talking Sahara Hotnights, All Time Low, The All-American Rejects, and Let Go-era Avril Lavigne. Artists who wrote near-exclusively in big shiny choruses, candy-coated multi-track harmonies, and hooks so sugary they can rot the teeth of a basement show lifer who refuses to admit a good time can come from anywhere.
Such influences weren’t immediately apparent on 2021’s Hey Tori EP, which positioned itself a little more on the scuzzy power pop side of the garage to rub shoulders with The Beths (who took them out on tour) and Sløtface, but listening close enough on a track like ‘We’re Just Friends’ calls to mind the anthemic radio-ready angst of New Found Glory’s heyday. Two years on the road and growing tighter as both a performance and songwriting unit, their band adolescence having occurred right as COVID showed up, has evidently grown their confidence to the point where they don’t need to hide those loves any longer. Debut album Take It or Leave It is a shameless 00’s mall-pop-punk throwback. Hooks that can barely wait for the opening drum rolls to finish before kicking in, choruses stickier than a theatre floor which has never been cleaned, and production (courtesy of Hey Tori’s George Perks) which imagines what The Matrix’s work on Let Go would’ve sounded like had it been ran through the Mega-Sound 8000 from Josie and the Pussycats.
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Despite how that sounds, ironically, the production is both crunchier and more full-bodied than most other acts from this revival – it’s time to admit that Travis Barker sucks as a producer, folks; his works are so tinny and vacuum-sealed. Pretty much the second after opener ‘Alpha Beta Sigma’ crackles into view, the slick/grit dichotomy overpowers the senses of the self-conscious. Snare drums with a rounded snap aiming for arenas, sharply-EQ’d guitars sitting at the centre of the mix busting out hopscotch riffs whilst a crunchy low-end surrounds the base, and vocals that alternate between harsh intercom verses and cleanly-layered harmonic choruses. Tracks like ‘If I Was a Man’, ‘Colourblind’, and ‘Am I Enough’ have the kind of sparkling dynamics, delivered with an almost cheerleader pep – most evident on the “Hey! Hey! Hey!”s of ‘If I Was a Man’ – that got The Donnas multiple teen movie soundtrack appearances and, in case it weren’t obvious by now, I am a major sucker for this sort of sound.
Unlike a lot of their contemporaries and forbearers, CHERYM are leaning more heavily into the political edge on Take It or Leave It. This is relatively new territory for them – Hey Tori was focused on personal relationships – but being tagged as “political” by press and fans, almost entirely due to their existence as queers in the scene, inspired them to give it a go in their music regardless. The results are somewhat mixed. This kind of fizzy pop doesn’t leave a lot of room for depth and the attempted injections of seriousness can jar depending on one’s tolerance for lyrics mostly written in the form of big catchy slogans.
Take It is frontloaded with these cuts, yet the delivery can just about keep the plane above water. ‘Alpha Beta Sigma’ tackles online misogyny with lines like “the Internet’s your church, and Tate is you saviour, I’m opening up my eyes to fucking incel behaviour”, but is most effective in the chorus when the trio engage in a lilting upper-register which has a very fun and convincing playground mock-sneer. ‘If I Was a Man’ ends its first verse with “just know that these gender roles are another form of capitalistic control” (not every Josie and the Pussycats comparison is a good one), but then the major chords of the chorus, and more of those great harmonies, crash in to save the day. As an enby, Nyree’s lead turn on ‘The Thing About Them’ absolutely speaks to me – “I don’t wanna wait, for you to calculate, I’m non-binary” has rolled around in my head for weeks – and it’s almost ruined by the inclusion of a spoken-word bit over the “they, them” refrain where two guys rattle off their confusion at the concept with all the acting talent of a 90s corporate instructional video.
Like I said, personal tolerance for the odd bit of earnest cheese and clunky phrasing is going to account for a lot. Every now and then, even I can feel like it tips too deep into the St. Trinian’s’ OST. The melody and subject matter on ‘Taking Up Sports’, about crushing hard on a super-hot footballer when you otherwise don’t give a shit about sports, are killer but the Bend It Like Beckham reference is too on the nose and the “Olé!” breakdown is a bridge too far for me. (Maybe it’ll play better live, but on-record it’s camembert levels of cheese.)
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More often than not, though, CHERYM keep it on the right side of the line, particularly with the tracks which focus more on the personal than the political. ‘Binary Star” is the obligatory lighters-in-the-air ballad which starts acoustic and transitions into a violin-featuring finale but, dammit all, that’s exactly the kind of soft-hearted love confessional my queer teenaged heart finds hard to resist; I can just picture the big damn kiss in a high school rom-com it deserves to soundtrack. Closer ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’ splices some Neck Deep into Beach Bunny, finding the melancholic triumph in finally cutting out a toxic self-destructive presence from your life. ADHD anthem ‘Do It Another Day,’ meanwhile, is perhaps CHERYM most potently distilled: big dumb riff, even bigger power chords driving it along, slick shiny production which still leaves room for a little snot in the vocal delivery, and simply a lot of damn fun when that chorus kicks in.
They won’t be for everyone, and it certainly feels like a debut album – the kind where a lot of the appeal comes just as much from the evident potential still untapped as it does the songs on-record – yet I cannot pretend like I haven’t had a lot of fun with Take It or Leave It. Genuine, ‘rockets past the taste barriers without being pulled over’, hooky fun. And, really, isn’t that the litmus test which matters for a pop punk revival act? You don’t see me voluntarily reaching for a Yungblud record, but you have a good chance of seeing me in the pit of a CHERYM gig.
Take It or Leave It is out on 16th February from Alcopop Records.
