Hold On Tight

Album Review

Given their emo-pop songcraft and powerhouse female vocals, it's hard not to draw parallels between Hey Monday and Paramore. Cassadee Pope is the band's centerpiece, howling lovelorn lyrics with all the marketable grit of Hayley Williams while her bandmates pummel through power chords and group singalongs. Paramore's platinum-selling Riot! incorporated elements of hard rock, but Hey Monday go for a sweeter approach, peppering their debut album with chunks of teenaged bubblegum pop coated in guitar distortion. Hold on Tight also benefits from the presence of S*A*M & Sluggo, the veteran production team that scored hit singles with Cobra Starship's "Snakes on a Plane" and Metro Station's "Shake It." Writing in tandem with those producers (as well as guest collaborators Butch Walker and William Beckett), Hey Monday come up with a number of radio-worthy pop anthems: "Homecoming," whose guitar intro borrows from "Hazy Shade of Winter";" "Set Off," an us-against-the-world dose of adrenaline; and the album's undisputed highlight, "How You Love Me Now." With massive "woah-oh!" vocals and a major key, sky-scraping melody, "How You Love Me Now" is the sort of guilty pleasure that inspires teens to roll down their car windows and adults to crank the stereo when no one's around. There's certainly some filler here, particularly toward the album's conclusion, but Hold on Tight is still stacked with enough T.G.I.F. nuggets to make it an endearing, engaging debut.