Does Yellowcard Deserve One?

Boy, it sure is hard being a rich and famous rock star.

That's the impression you get, at least, from the newest offering by the punk/pop act Yellowcard. Their newest album, Lights and Sounds, is a quasi-concept album dealing with the travails of having hit the big time in the world of rock 'n' roll.

Hailing from Jacksonville, Fla., the five-member band first released two independent albums with middling success. Then 2003's Ocean Avenue propelled them out of the local scene into the global one, going double-platinum (they sold 2 million records) in the U.S. within the year and earning a berth on the Warped Tour.

So what's a yellow-hot band to do? Why, up and move to the land where dreams are made: Hollywood. That's where founding member and lead songwriter Ryan Key and Co. discovered the city's other, unofficial motto: "What have you done for me lately?" They were under tremendous pressure to repeat their success—there's nothing new there—but they also felt pressure to fit into a certain mold.

According to Key, the band was expected to stick to a genre in which they didn't necessarily think they belonged. After all, how many punk/pop bands boast a—gasp!—violinist (Sean Mackin)?

Get Outta Dodge, Er, Hollywood
That was the genesis of the album Lights and Sounds and its title track, which is, as Key told MTV, "about a band like us coming into a career that we didn't think we'd have. You find yourself surrounded by a lot of false people, a lot of people who are not doing it for the same reasons you are. That song is about the struggle of not giving in to that."

This conflict led to lyrics such as, "Make it new but stay in the lines/Just let go but keep it inside/Smile big for everyone/Even when you know what they've done/They gave you the end but not where to start/Not how to build, how to tear it apart."

Meanwhile, "Down on My Head" ("There's nothing to fight for/It's already dead") and "City of Devils" ("And I can feel the fire of city lights burn/And it's hard to find angels in hell/Feel like I don't belong and I/Can't tell right from wrong and why/Have I been here so long") speak to bitterness and disillusionment, as does "Hollywood Died" ("Nobody told her she'd lose in the first round/The last fight was fixed from the start").

That's not to say Tinseltown doesn't generate a lot of pull. "Rough Landing, Holly" speaks to the difficulty of giving up its allure ("And I still can't get out/She's all I think about/Can't let her go/... She moves fast, takes control/And like a heart attack I know I can't turn back").

Living (and Dying) in the Rest of the Real World
Not every song on Lights and Sounds sings of La-La Land dystopia, though. For those familiar with the movie Big Fish, about the relationship between a tall-tale-telling father and his son, the song "How I Go" will spark memories ("I could tell you the wildest of tales/My friend the giant and traveling sales/Tell you all the times that I failed/Years all behind me the stories I exhaled").

More poignant are "Words, Hands, Hearts," about the 9/11 attacks ("The whole world was sleeping and I was there/You could just sense this feeling in the air/Like no one's words were good enough/To define what we fear") and the antiwar song "Two Weeks From Twenty" ("We lost another one that we sent with a gun/They're gonna miss him he was two weeks from twenty"). That song also takes swipes at President Bush ("And there's still no shame/From the man to blame"), which is not surprising considering Yellowcard's presence on the Rock Against Bush Tour in 2004.

More troublesome is the mysteriously titled "Martin Sheen or JFK," which seems to hint at suicide as a solution ("Here it is one more glass for these broken hands/Goes down for you/I've fallen in I sink then swallow I never meant/To see this through/I'm taking them all back for good/To a place where I know that I'm safe").

In soccer the referee will "yellow card" a player for persistently breaking the rules or complaining about a ref's calls. Two yellow cards equals ejection. Yellowcard tends to have a pop-ish, upbeat sound, but when you get under the surface of what they're singing about, you wonder what there is to be bubbly about. Factor in the occasional profanity and you can consider Yellowcard's name its own form of caution.