This is pretty peculiar. It seems to be a bunch of kids into the Promise Ring and Hey Mercedes getting together to make a pop punk MTVmo band. I am pretty sure this has been done before, but perhaps not with this level of success. The sheet that comes with it says “the common goal of the band was to revive the emotion that has been lost in the current slew of popular bands in the pop punk genre.” So basically they want to be Jimmy Eat World crossed with Blink 182. That is a fair goal, four of the five songs on here are absurdly catchy and pretty much meet the exact criteria that these dudes are striving for. “Disconnect” is a blindingly effective song that particularly ticks all the boxes. “Dude, Are You Kidding Me?” is perhaps the stand out track, rocking out to the Nth degree, and bringing the dudemo gang vocals. I think that if these guys were your pals and you got to see them in a basement, you would have a fucking amazing time, especially if you were really really drunk. It’s kind of lost when it gets outside of that though, because this sounds exactly like how they want it to sound – cheeseball pop punk of the cheesiest kind. These days I have no issues with stuff that sounds like this, it is good fun and it’s way better than Something to Write Home About too.
Still not exactly sure how this wound up in my hands to be honest, but fair play to Man Overboard, sounding like globally popular Blink 182 is a strange ambition but you completely nail it. This is goofy fun, if any of what I have written above makes you think “Actually, I might like that”, then you should definitely check them out as you will almost definitely love it.