Tread carefully around Negativity Bias, the debut album by Nashville’s The Rip Taylors featuring Classic Pat. Their music is so sticky, it might take a couple of days to scratch yourself free and remove all the bubblegum from underneath your Chuck Taylors.

There’s absolutely no good reason why we had to wait so long for this record—at least four of these songs date back to their 2016 debut EP. But there’s also zero reason to complain when the result is this much fun. This stuff is so rudimentary and straightforward, and yet so perfectly executed, that the sheer power of the hooks and earworms becomes irresistible. Every song title is a first-person confession about what the person wants (not to be alone with you), what the person is not (stupid), what the person has (bad attitude), doesn’t know (how to be a decent person), or what the person doesn’t believe in (you). It’s less a tracklist and more a therapy session set to power chords—ten “I” statements that weaponize negativity into the catchiest ammunition pop punk has to offer. This is some catchy shit.

Out now on CD at Mom’s Basement Records.

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