The Bouncing Souls
How I Spent My Summer Vacation

THE REVIEW

Behind a cover that is certainly not the best, lies one of the, perhaps the best Pop-Punk album ever. Perhaps not the absolute best, maybe one of them, but the group is definitely my favorite in the genre. They formed in 1987, their first album came out in 1994, and the subsequent ones are an ascending climax that in 2001 leads to the peak of "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."

The album has the ability to establish a great emotional value right from the start with those who follow this band, I don't know why, maybe because in its simplicity it can be easily defined as "Ours," "Mine," "Yours," or perhaps simply because it is the most representative album of the band. Perhaps the most beautiful.

Standing out is the anthem, the most acclaimed song, one of the most loved pieces by the Bouncing Souls, "True Believers." Not to be outdone are "The Something Special," "That Song," "Broken Record," and "Gone." Simple songs, melodic, direct, and above all beautiful. We don't have the levels of craziness of Screeching Weasel and Queers; we are on less raw and more melodic territories, we also have nostalgic tones absent in the early Pop-Punk, a greater seriousness (but not too much) and maturity that blends well with a certain playfulness (I'm not sure if that's the right word but honestly, I don't care much) that in an album like this cannot be missing.

And anyway, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" is just a step in a career characterized by the complete absence of missteps.