Sticks And Stones

Album Of The Week

Sticks And Stones – New Found Glory

Release Year: 2002
Genre: Pop Punk

Favorite Tracks: Something I Call Personality, The Great Houdini, The Story So Far

The early 2000s were a weird, perfect moment for music. Grunge was fading out, radio was wide open, and something loud, bright, and emotional rushed in to fill the space. Whether you loved it or hated it, pop-punk had gone mainstream. Blink-182, Sum 41, Bowling for Soup — it felt like bangers were dropping every week.

Right in the middle of all that, I was entering middle school, realizing for the first time that I didn’t have to like what my parents liked anymore. I could choose my own soundtrack. For me, that band was New Found Glory.

They had the nasal vocals and glossy hooks of early-2000s radio rock, sure — but buried inside were these heavier, hardcore-influenced guitar lines that always felt like they were ready to explode. I didn’t know it then, but that blend of pop-punk and aggression was basically a roadmap for where my taste would go: punk to pop-punk to hardcore to metalcore. Looking back now, it makes perfect sense why this band grabbed me so hard.

Signed to Drive-Thru Records, New Found Glory released their third album, Sticks and Stones, and it was everywhere. I remember hearing it on the radio driving home from soccer practice, or blasting it through my cassette-deck stereo in my bedroom while recording songs onto blank tapes (LimeWire who?). I’d think to myself, “This band pumps me up.”

The second the opening riff of “My Friends Over You” hits, I’m instantly back in endless summers — playing soccer, skateboarding, staying up as late as possible with my best friend Mikey, grinding Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX on the original PlayStation. Mikey and his older brother shared a room, and we’d always dig through his CDs to see what he might let us borrow for the night. I don’t even think he knows how much his music taste shaped mine.

My core friend group grew a lot during these years and we all found each other through a shared love of music or skateboarding, we have all grown up and started family’s or moved to far off states, but there is one thing that has always stayed the same, we still love this band and we are still sharing new music that we find.

Production on Sticks and Stones kicked off in February 2002 with Neal Avron at the helm — a producer who also worked with Everclear, Yellowcard, Fall Out Boy, and The Used. And this album was stacked with cameos and creative energy from the scene: Toby Morse (H2O), Mark Hoppus (Blink-182), and Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano (Alkaline Trio) all had a hand in it.

This was New Found Glory’s first true “studio album” after moving from Florida to California. Surrounded by friends and fellow musicians, they found a creative comfort zone that let the songwriting really stretch out. You can hear it in every track. This album didn’t just define their career — it helped shape the next generation of pop-punk, directly influencing bands like Fall Out Boy and The Story So Far (who even took their name from this record).

The Gear

Like most pop-punk bands of the era, the foundation was guitars with EMGs into Marshalls and Mesas — tight, aggressive, and ready to cut. But for this record, NFG pushed things further. They experimented with-

Drums were taken just as seriously: three full kits, over ten different snares, and most famously the OG Tama Bell Brass — that warm, punchy crack you hear all over the album.

Final Thoughts

This band took everything they were living through — relationships, growing up, figuring out adulthood — and turned it into one of the most important albums of my childhood. From track one all the way to the joke songs at the end, every single moment hits me somewhere. It has that rare “it factor” that pulls me back to being a kid while still somehow fitting perfectly into my life now as a husband and a dad.

When I put this album on, I usually don’t just play it once. I hit repeat — because some records don’t just soundtrack a moment… they follow you for life.

This album taught me that growing up doesn’t mean letting go of the music that made you feel alive — it means carrying it forward with more purpose. Sticks and Stones didn’t just soundtrack my childhood, it shaped how I hear melody, energy, and emotion to this day. You can hear its fingerprints all over the bands that followed and in the songs still being written right now. So if there’s a part of you that still misses late nights, loud guitars, and feeling like anything was possible, start here — press play, mean it, and turn it up a little louder for the kid you used to be.