Excited to announce we’ll be co-releasing Lost Boy’s 2013 EP ‘Growing Pains’ remastered on cassette. Check the music video of the single above, with a review written by Dave Vitola below.

Lost Boy are an emo/punk band hailing from Augusta, Georgia. The “Garden City Punx” are guaranteed to lodge their catchy straight-to-the-point jams deep into the most angsty part of your brain. The band is gearing up to release a re-master of their 2013 demo, Growing Pains, via Genius Factory Records and Heads Up Records. 

Growing Pains kicks off with the anthemic “Plaza Place.” This track is destined for sing-along driven pile-ons, with raspy vocals backed by incredibly catchy harmonies. This song boasts a gazy guitar line that is very reminiscent of Title Fight, but quickly explodes into something that pulls the emo teenager inside us all right back into the early 2000s. “Plaza Place” sucks us into this record in the same way that “You Know How I Do” kicks off Taking Back Sunday’s classic, Tell all Your Friends; We instantly know we’re going to devour every song to come. 

The guitar work on this album does an excellent job of not abusing the now cliché “twinkly” trope that we are all too familiar with, and instead opts for an almost shreddy feel at times. “DreamEater” is a prime example, opening with a fast and pleasing guitar line similar to something we might have heard on an early Brand New record. Juxtaposed against this welcomed shreddiness is a gang vocal pattern that will definitely make you want to listen to this song over and over again. 

“Little Rock” is one of the standout tracks on this release, and seemingly a kind of climax in the lyrical subject matter. This song has a loose and bouncy feel initially, making the gruff vocals inspire a very Algernon-like sound. The jangly chorus-tinged guitars lead us up to the one-minute mark, where the catchiest and most heartfelt sing-along moment leaps out from the song. “My heart packed its shit and made its way out west,” is a lyric that we’d rather scream along to in a VFW hall someplace than listen to in the solitude of our headphones. 

The album closes with “Glenn Ave,” a two-minute crowd pleaser about moving on. We’re given plenty of hooks in this one, along with an interesting melody on what sounds like some sort of toy xylophone (hey, cool). There are definite You Blew It! vibes at work, here. As short as this song is, it has one of the more verse-chorus-verse type of set ups on this record, leaving us with a very accessible parting morsel. 

Lost Boy’s Growing Pains is a must have for fans of older emo bands. Their new video for “Plaza Place” shows us beautiful scenery against grimy graffiti covered walls, evoking the same somber-yet welcoming aesthetic as their record. The re-mastered cassette of Growing Pains will be up for pre-order via Heads Up Records and Genius Factory Records sometime in February.