The Philly/Jersey area is a breeding ground for pop punk darlings. Over the years, these two neighboring cities have given rise to some of the hottest acts in the genre—The Wonder Years, Man Overboard, Major League, The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball, to name just a few—and the scene shows no signs of slowing down.
Cut from the same cloth is My Brother, The Hunter, a band who clearly idolizes their hometown heroes. Their debut album, World Weary Youth, plays like a stripped-down greatest hits set from any one of the aforementioned groups. In fact, the group’s only cover song on the album (The Story So Far‘s “Clairvoyant”) blends so seamlessly into the mix that an unfamiliar listener might mistake the track for an original piece.
World Weary Youth is wonderfully sad, naive and personal. An acoustic mix of melancholy instrumentation backs lead vocalist Connor Gebhardt as he croons about being jaded by the thriving local scene (“Another pop punk show/I can’t relate to all these band’s lyrics that I don’t know”), confused by society’s facade (“All the picture-perfect people pass perfectly by/leaving the rest of tired and wondering why you bother with your masks/What have you got to hide?/Who are you trying to impress?”) and beaten down by painful heartache (“I used to love your writing/Now it’s the last thing I wanna see/Now it’s never about me”). My Brother, The Hunter is quite a mess, and that’s exactly what keeps things interesting.
Check out World Weary Youth below. If you like what you hear, make sure to visit My Brother, The Hunter on Bandcamp for a name-your-price download of the album.