Late Bloomer Another One Again

North Carolina, USA alt-indie rockers fourth album & some of their finest to date. Late Bloomer has long been known for meshing considered pop songwriting with “loud, confrontational force.” But on Another One Again, the band’s fourth record, the band channels the frenetic energy of longtime influences like The Replacements and Guided By Voices into a more calculated direction. The result is an enormous leap forward for the band, one which lands somewhere between the DIY punk rock they grew up on, the fuzzy alt-rock of Superdrag, Sugar, Dinosaur Jr, mixed with the subdued harmony of The Weakerthans - often in the same song. The final record in a loose trilogy that began with 2014’s acclaimed Things Change and continued with Waiting (2018), Another One Again sees the band tackling familiar themes like forgiveness, depression, and religion, and the dissolution of friendships, illustrated by earworms like the enormous opener “Self Control” and the power pop banger “Birthday.”