Taking Back Sunday

Everything you really need to know about Taking Back Sunday is right there in the name. Think about it — a day of rest forcefully reclaimed, what better symbol for the contrast between punky edge and poppy hooks at the core of the Long Island band’s sound? Their 2006 breakthrough hit, “MakeDamnSure,” tells it all, with mouth-watering melodies ripping out of Adam Lazzara’s mouth like the lyrics are setting his tongue on fire. Sure, sometimes TBS lets their tightly wound tunefulness lead them into a track like “Where My Mouth Is,” an almost U2ish cut that’s one waving lighter away from classic power-ballad status. But more often, they blast a hole in your speakers with punk-powered smart bombs like “Sink Into Me,” never losing their knack for an unforgettable melody.

In Next Steps, Taking Back Sunday upends expectations, with classic-rock covers and acoustic artistry.

Over the last decade, Taking Back Sunday has earned a lofty reputation among lovers of emo and post-hardcore, but their sound digs deeper than those definitions might suggest. Those who know them solely by their hits probably wouldn’t expect to hear TBS roots-rocking it up on a cover of Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” that stays strikingly true to the original. Even in concert, the band delivers plenty of left hooks — one minute they might be slamming out a live version of “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team)” like their lives depend on shattering the stage beneath them, and the next they can deliver an acoustic “Didn’t See That Coming” with maybe one-tenth the volume of the former, but twice the intensity.

Taking Back Sunday entered the 2000s as a bunch of young indie-rock upstarts with everything to prove, and they ended it as major-label men with a stack of Gold records and a huge following hungry for their every utterance. From the hard-charging howl of debut single “Timberwolves At New Jersey” to the classic pop chorus that comes busting out of 2011’s “Call Me In the Morning,” Taking Back Sunday has drawn its own destiny on a musical map that’s entirely their own. Call it pop-punk, emo, or alternative, but when you add it all up it’s simply Taking Back Sunday, whose most undeniable moments are all gathered right here.