Nostalgia sells. Just ask the countless musicians tapping into the warm familiarity of early-’00s pop-punk. Berkeley, California’s Mom Jeans, known as one of the more prominent bands carrying on emo’s powerful legacy for a modern audience, is stepping into the arena with the release of their forthcoming album Sweet Tooth, out Feb. 25, 2022.
Their newest single “Circus Clown” sounds straight out of the teen dramas with a maxed-out music budget, leaning into the impeccable enunciation of a Blink-182. The cheeky song tells of a lovestruck narrator with the infectious hook, “If you just put your head on top of my shoulder / I’ll miss my friends but we can grow older.” It’s a sound that comes effortlessly to them, showing the slow progression of emo music from the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate and American Football to poppier bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco.
“Those hits by Blink-182 and Green Day, all those bands, it’s just hooks for days and really excellent songwriting,” says vocalist Eric Butler in a statement. “They really just tried to write incredible songs that would get stuck in people’s heads, so we wanted to try our own version of that. Ear candy is the goal, so Sweet Tooth is the record.”
Watch the video for “Circus Clown” below. You can preorder Sweet Tooth ahead of its Feb. 25 release here.
