It’s been nearly a decade since you could say there was a new Yellowcard album out, but that’s finally changed with Better Days, the “Ocean Avenue” outfit’s first full-length effort since reuniting in 2022 following their 2017 breakup.
“The response to the album has been overwhelmingly positive,” frontman Ryan Key tells ABC Audio. “It feels like there’s just such a positive charge around this thing.”
That positivity radiates throughout the whole band, which you can hear as Better Days reflects on the time it’s taken Yellowcard to deliver another record.
“We’ve come a long way from where we were when we decided in a hotel room in whatever old city we were in in 2015 when we said it’s time to hang this up, we need to make a plan,” Key says. “[It’s] been a long road from there, and I think the record very much dives into the growth and the process that we’ve gone through to get here.”
In putting together Better Days, Yellowcard decided to reach out to longtime friend and songwriter Nick Long, who ended up connecting them with Travis Barker. The blink-182 drummer then ended up producing and playing on the album.
“It happened through friendship,” Key says. “The origin of this project happened through reaching out to people that care about our band and want to be a part of what we’re doing, and that led us to Travis producing the album and everything that followed.”
Yellowcard will continue to celebrate friendship and Better Days while playing the When We Were Young festival, taking place Saturday and Sunday in Las Vegas.
“That show’s all about camaraderie,” Key says. “It’s about the scene, connectivity with people that we’ve been doing this with for 20 years.”
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