By Although pop-punk has long been a genre associated with a lack of maturity both musically and lyrically (admit it, when you hear the words “pop” and “punk” together, you’re probably thinking of shiny three-chord rock with lyrics complaining about girls and parents who “just don’t understand” that are sung by a kid whose voice is so whiny that you want to punch him in the face), The Starting Line is out to prove otherwise.
Granted, the Pennsylvania-based band isn’t swinging for the fences by taking the ambitious concept album route a la Green Day’s “American Idiot,” but the harder guitars and more thoughtful lyrics featured on the band’s newest album “Direction” are a far cry from the sugary sweet anthems that were once the quartet’s stock in trade.
“I think we’re definitely more comfortable with who we are,” guitarist Matt Watts said. “I feel like we definitely have more of a rock influence now than a pop-punk influence. I think we’re really focused on writing timeless songs that we’re all proud of and going to be proud of for the next 30 years.”
According to Watts, the guys drastically changed their sound for the new record because they wanted to follow the mold of their influences like Jimmy Eat World and Radiohead by taking their music to different places.
“We feel like we’ve always tried to improve on our songwriting and never do the same thing twice,” he said. “We don’t want to put out the same record twice and kind of shortchange our fans, and we want to keep challenging ourselves.”
The Starting Line’s beginnings trace back to 1999, when Watts invited lead singer/bassist Kenny Vasoli via e-mail to jam after reading Vasoli’s AOL Instant Messenger profile. Soon afterward, Vasoli got together with Watts, guitarist Mike Golla and drummer Tom Gryskewicz to form the band, then called Sunday Drive.
The quartet began to make a name for itself locally by touring extensively and selling cassettes of its four-song demo. It eventually recorded 12 songs for the small indie label We the People Records in 2000. When the up-and-coming pop-punk label Drive-Thru Records heard the songs, it bought the demos and signed the band to its roster.
“We were in the right place at the right time,” Watts said. “That was the time when Drive-Thru had New Found Glory and Midtown, and everything was sort of building, and it was pretty much the coolest thing that ever happened to us.”
After the EP “With Hopes of Starting Over” was released by Drive-Thru in April 2001, the band (which by this time had changed its name to The Starting Line because a Christian band had already taken the name Sunday Drive) went back on the road in support of the record and even played on that summer’s Vans Warped Tour.
The next year, the band recorded and released its debut LP, “Say It Like You Mean It,” a poppier-than-pop effort that spawned the hit singles “The Best of Me” and “Leaving.”
When it came time for Vasoli and company to produce a follow-up to “Say It Like You Mean It,” Geffen Records (which was the band’s label by this time because of its distribution deal with Drive-Thru, allowing the label to take over any of Drive-Thru’s bands) wanted The Starting Line to continue in a “TRL”-friendly direction, but the band had other plans.
“Everyone there had a different vision of what we were and what we should be,” Watts said. “We were told that we needed to be a Simple Plan and we needed to sound like the new New Found Glory record, which are all fine things, but we kind of wanted to do our own thing. We had this vision of where we wanted to go, and the label was fighting that, and we were fighting that. It just wasn’t a good situation all around.”
In retaliation, the band wrote and recorded “Based on a True Story,” a more anguished album featuring songs targeted at Geffen such as “Ready,” which includes the lyrics “I’ve been chained like a tiger/To hundreds of liars all holding hands.”
“Every time they kept saying,’Write a poppy, catchy song,’ we kept writing a song like ‘Ready,’ and I guess they got sick of us enough where they just gave us the green light to go into the studio,” Watts said.
Despite being darker in tone, “Based on a True Story” was more successful than “Say It Like You Mean It” upon its release in May 2005, eventually landing The Starting Line a spot on that fall’s Nintendo Fusion Tour alongside the likes of Fall Out Boy. After being released from Geffen upon its request, the band went on to sign with Virgin Records.
With its new single “Island” getting airplay as the band begins its nationwide tour with pop-punk sensation Paramore, The Starting Line has finally found some success and stability, although the guys haven’t lost touch with what made them want to pursue music in the first place.
“We just wanted to get signed to Drive-Thru and put out a record and go on tour, and I don’t think any of us could have predicted that it would go this far, and we’re super thankful that it has,” Watts said. “But we all wanted to start playing music for fun, and that’s why we’re still doing it.”
The Starting Line is playing at the Wiltern in L.A. on Nov. 14 with Paramore and The Almost.
