The brainchild of Mom Jeans guitarist Bart Thompson, Graduating Life deal in a sometimes gruff, sometimes slick take on pop-punk. But whereas recent Kerrang! cover stars Machine Gun Kelly and KennyHoopla have been throwing the pop-punk sound all the way back to the early ’00s, the formula behind Graduating Life’s music is more complex. There’s plenty of Say Anything-esque poeticism going on across new LP II, but so too are there nods from Bart to acts as diverse as The Academy Is…, Jeff Rosenstock and twenty one pilots. And no matter what musical avenue the band wander down on this album, they always stumble across a win. Opening track Photo Album’s decision to contrast jaunty instrumentation with dark lyrics suggests the record is very much headed down the Say Anything-meets-Je...