Late Bloomer

Late Bloomer has long been known for meshing considered pop songwriting with “loud, confrontational force.” But on Another One Again, the band’s fourth record, the North Carolina band channels the frenetic energy of longtime influences like The Replacements & Guided By Voices into a more calculated direction.

The result is an enormous leap forward for the band, one which lands somewhere between the DIY punk rock they grew up on, the fuzzy alt-rock of Superdrag, Sugar, Dinosaur Jr, mixed with the subdued harmony of The Weakerthans – often in the same song.

The final record in a loose trilogy that began with 2014’s acclaimed Things Change and continued with Waiting (2018), Another One Again sees the band tackling familiar themes like forgiveness, depression, and religion, and the dissolution of friendships, illustrated by earworms like the enormous opener “Self Control” and the power pop banger “Birthday.”

For their first full-length in several years, the band tracked with Greg Elkins (American Aquarium, Confessor), before sending it off to Waiting engineer Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr., Pixies, Speedy Ortiz) to produce from afar. The tracks were then mastered by Carl Saff (Cheekface, Fu Manchu, Protomartyr).

“While Things Change seemed to be asking for forgiveness and Waiting was dealing a lot with being forgiven and seeking help,” Robbins says, “This album is really looking past that and being like, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’”

“I think they call that going to therapy.”