Good for Me

Without ever breaking big, the Swellers have become pop-punk veterans, playing in a style that, by 2011, was so closely identified with Green Day that it was hard to avoid being compared with the platinum-selling trio. To say that the Swellers sound like Green Day is only to say that they, too, play straight-ahead punk-pop, speedily riffing through melodic songs in hard rock arrangements. The Swellers have not begun to use the form to make grand statements like Green Day, but singer/guitarist Nick Diener is expressing himself in the songs on Good for Me, mostly by reflecting on a romantic relationship that seems to have gone sour. Wishing his lover could see "Inside My Head," he admits, "I was wrong," but it seems to be too late. In "Better Things," he celebrates his improved fortunes before adding, "I guess you wouldn't know, ‘cause you're not here." Differences appear to be irreconcilable; in "Prime Meridian," Diener concludes, "It's not hard to see/The things you believe/Don't work for me." And yet, the album's last line finds him lamenting, "I'll never be me without you." Since the heyday of pop-punk seems to have passed while the Swellers were out touring, the band might be seen as something of a 1990s nostalgia act, and that, curiously, may suit Diener just fine. The album's most heartfelt song is "The Best I Ever Had," in which he reminisces about the ‘90s as the era when he looked forward to getting the latest records from Seattle, records like the early works of Green Day.