Gentlemen's Brawl

Although Broadway hails from Kissimmee, Fla., the group's studied approach to guitar-throttled punk-pop is so overflowing with post-adolescent urgency and sugarcoated song hooks that it'd be easy to mistake it for an Orange County band. Gentleman’s Brawl is chock-full of catchy songs, starting with the punch-throwing “Party at Sean’s House.” There’s honestly not one wasted track here—perhaps a result of the band honing its craft to a razor sharpness in the three long years it took off between albums. With gigantic crumbling walls of guitar distortion—and hamfisted Jake Garland drumming like he was kidnapped from a death metal band—“There’s No Crying in Baseball” is a rolling juggernaut and a sing-along standout. Sean Connors’ guitar work displays an otherworldly versatility, especially on the anthemic “Faster Faster,” where he effortlessly segues from melodious fingerpicking to ascending spiraled parts and hard-chugging riffs. Frontman Misha Camacho’s vocals teeter on the edge of manhood, sometimes nasally inflecting like a kid with hay fever on the title track and other times (as on “I Am Not a Rockstar”) wailing with an assertive swagger.