Two plus decades into their career, Taking Back Sunday are doing what few of their early-aughts counterparts are doing: alive, kicking, and evolving. It’s admirable for a band that certainly could rest on their laurels — including two gold records and one platinum record — and many wouldn’t blame them. But, just back in 2023 the band put out their latest record, 152, and it showed a reinvigorated and energized version of Taking Back Sunday.
For the band, 152 was their first record in 7 years, which represents the longest gap between records in their storied history. This comes up when I was chatting with vocalist Adam Lazzara when he notes at first the band didn’t realize the amount of time that was gone, and while admitting the pandemic may have played a factor, it was still “too long” in between. As valid as the pandemic would be as an excuse, Lazzara is quick to point out there was still “five other years” to account for. “Once we realized the amount of time between ‘Tidal Wave’ and ‘152,’ we were just trying to get our heads around it,” he explains. “The pandemic forbid us from being together for a little over a year, but there’s still five other years. Time just seems to be moving different these days.”
For the guys in Taking Back Sunday as well, everyone has families, kids, and all of these other factors that additionally play into the gap between records. Things that make Lazzara and co. significantly busier than they were 20+ years ago pumping out a record every other year or so. “We had really thought for a while, ‘Oh this is just what you do, put a record out every two years. And then time goes on, life changes and your priorities shift,” he says. “Then it’s like, maybe we don’t have to rush, rush, rush, and can take our time and put something out that we’re really proud of. And thats exactly what we did with ‘152.’”
At this point in their careers, as well, another factor in allowing Taking Back Sunday to take that additional time is not having any label or executives looking over their shoulder and applying pressure to get things moving. Lazzara points to the way that streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. seem to be racing to pump out the most content rather than the best content. “For us, you know, I’ll take quality over quantity every time. And so that’s just kind of where our headspace is at.”
One of the things that makes 152 and Taking Back Sunday as a whole still work is the fact that they are still putting out songs that resonate and are genuine and you can tell they’re passionate about. The focus on quality over quantity comes across within the records and again when you see them live and they translate just as well as the older songs. “One of the things that I’m most proud about with our band is that I feel like each record is a really good snapshot for work of the kind of people we were,” Lazarra begins to explain more.
“So for me personally, when I look back, that’s a lot of how even I can track big moments in my life. You know, like ‘I remember the guy who wrote this song’ or ‘I remember the version of myself that thought this way’ so I’m gonna go back and spend some time with him. So with that said, I feel like in order to like keep moving and and keep doing, there’s the important part of just saying true to the people we are now,” Lazarra tells me. That, in fact, is where the beauty lies within the current scope of Taking Back Sunday: they are as genuine and as much themselves as they have always been.
The older songs from Taking Back Sunday aren’t going anywhere, and they’ll always have their place in the live shows and in the hearts of the band just as much — if not more — as the rest of us. But the magic in Taking Back Sunday in 2025 is their mindset of how they want to operate as a band, being themselves and looking forward. “I’m sure we can do a bunch of the cash in stuff right now. But, I’m not really interested in that,” Lazzara begins, “And two, we’re just some of the luckiest people we know. For me, I’m like all these years I’ve been able to grow up with a lot of these folks, you know, and they’ve grown up with with me. I’m just like anybody else, I still love — there’s records that I’ll put on because of the nostalgia and because it’ll take me back to that place. And I think that stuff is amazing, and I lean on it heavily still, but that’s honoring a different part of myself.”
“I want to honor the whole, and in order to do that, there needs to be something that speaks to more the just actual experience that I’m having. And so that’s why putting out new things and trying to push [ourselves], that’s why that’s important.”
To the point Lazzara made, Taking Back Sunday has the big songs and big records to surely do an anniversary tour every other year or so. They have curated a legacy in the alternative space that is unrivaled, and one that means a lot to plenty of people around the world. But the past is not the only legacy Taking Back Sunday are worried about. They have gas left in the tank. They are still writing songs that not only resonate with people but still are leaving lasting impressions on old fans — and creating new ones.
152 is unapologetically and authentically who Taking Back Sunday was at the time of it’s release back in 2023, and has aged gracefully with time. But, now that a few years have passed, I look to Lazzara and question if there’s anything he wishes they could have differently. He tells me a story of how he typically listens to the radio in the Apple Music app, and earlier in day of our interview one of the songs from 152 came on,”I Am the Only One Who Knows You.” He shares, “Typically, if it’s any other song of ours, I’ll just skip it. It’s like ‘Oh, I don’t need to hear that,’ but I let it play. And I just thought, I can’t believe we made this [song], this is so rad. So, I’m still at that place and I just hope, you know, it continues to find people.”
Lazzara goes on to share a story of when guitarist/vocalist John Nolan and him went to see Pearl Jam, and on a whim they opened their show by playing their second, Vs., in full completely unannounced. “Ever since then, that left a really big impression on us. We haven’t really been in a place where we could actively be chasing that, but that’s what we’re trying to actively chase now,” he says. This has lead to them revisiting a lot of stuff that he says they either haven’t listened to in a long time, or nearly forgot. “When you’re touring and playing live, we kind of got to this place where it’s like ‘Okay, these are the songs we play live. Maybe we’ll switch it up from time to time,’ and now to be in a place where the entire catalog is free game is amazing.”
A perfect example of this for Taking Back Sunday is their song “El Paso,” which serves as the album opener on their 2011 self-titled album. It was a song they opened with for years when they played live, feeling confident that fans would love it and really appreciate it. “We opened with it for two, three years and every time it was like crickets,” Lazzara shares. “We had this joke of we’ll play it from time to time with the understanding it’s probably going to just be for us. We joked there’s ten people that like the song and we’re five of them. Then there’s my dad, and two of his buddies.”
It’s an entirely exciting ting to witness though for the band, when time passes and the reception for a song like “El Paso” changes and softens up. Time goes on and people grow to appreciate a song like that, or whatever their personal one may be. This includes even the band members themselves as Lazzara shares “Going through the self-titled record or even [2004’s] ‘Where You want to Be,’ it’s like oh my god there’s this whole song we should have been playing all these years!” But it’s fun revisiting these songs and records, because you’re looking at it through an entirely different lens.”
I bring up to Lazzara their 20th anniversary tour they did back in 2019, where over the course of 2 nights they performed 2002’s Tell All Your Friends, Where You Want to Be, and 2006’s Louder Now in full. This brought the opportunity for me, personally to hear a song like “This Photograph Is Proof” live, and others that maybe hadn’t made an appearance on the setlist in a while. He quickly responds, “What’s crazy about [“This Photograph Is Proof”] specifically, is it used tobe in the setlist every night — and then it was like, I guess it’s like nine years since played this. It’s a really great example of a song that can mean something entirely different to you, or to me like there’s different things that happen, like in my body and a different feeling I have when I hear it now as opposed to when we first released it.”
Near the end of our conversation, I check in with Lazzara on the future of Taking Back Sunday and if the band has started thinking about a follow-up to 152. I jokingly pose if they’re still taking a seven year at a time pace, or if they’re maybe a little further ahead this time around. “Yeah, hopefully not seven years. That was ridiculous,” he quips. He further explains there recently have been two main goals for the band: to get to where they can play any song they have at any given time, and then to be working on new stuff as well.
Over the years since 152, he explains that there have been times when each one of the members of Taking Back Sunday have been caught in the studio, and despite them all living in separate places, the current technology allows them to still bounce ideas back and forth with each other. “It’s kind of like, when we’re not together, we can still be tossing ideas back and forth right? So that’s always going on one way or another,” Lazzara explains. At the time of our conversation, their tour with Coheed and Cambria was still a few days away, so they were focusing on rehearsals and making sure they were locked and loaded for the tour, but he shared once they all get settled in, there should be some room for kicking ideas around now that they are all together again.
The beautiful part about where Taking Back Sunday is, ironically, we don’t know what the future may sound like. Sonically, lyrically, all around. What we do know, is it will be authentic and will be exactly what they want to give us. You can call it a second wind, or whatever you want to call it. But you can’t say it’s not Taking Back Sunday.
