Late Bloomer - Another One Again Cass.

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 and 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 Charlotte-based trio of Neil Mauney, Josh Robbins, and Scott Wishart took a different, more protracted approach to recording. The band tracked at Pershing Hill Studios in Raleigh 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).

The album introduces longtime collaborator Jarad Rogers (Nerve Endings) on additional guitar and also features guests including pedal steel guitarist Wes Hamilton (Pullman Strike), acoustic guitar & dobro by Stephen Pierce (Kindling, Gold Dust) and vocalists Sarah Blumenthal (Alright, Faye), Elise Okusami (Oceanator) and Rob Pennington (By the Grace of God, Endpoint).

And there’s a new sense of urgency and dynamism on Another One Again. Whereas Mauney sang of existential indifference in 2018’s “Heaven,” songwriting partner Robbins asks in the haunting “Mother Mary”: “How do I get forgiveness if god doesn’t exist?” Mauney himself concedes on the massively catchy “Hope For Rain”: “The plates will shift and joints will ache / The waves are gonna crash every day.”

“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.”