Released on September 19th, 2006 through Geffen Records, Coming Home arrived after a run that had established New Found Glory as one of pop punk’s biggest bands. Instead of trying to recreate Sticks and Stones or Catalyst, their fifth album slowed everything down!
The fast pop punk that had defined much of their career was replaced by a warmer, more melodic sound. Piano, keyboards, strings and cleaner guitars became a much bigger part of the record, while songs including “Oxygen”, “It’s Not Your Fault”, “Hold My Hand” and “Coming Home” focused heavily on relationships, distance and wanting to get back to the people you love.
Contemporary reviews show just how divided the reaction could be. Scene Point Blank gave Coming Home a 9/10, praising the band’s progression and arguing that they had found a comfortable new sound. AllMusic similarly praised its more mature approach. On the other side, Punktastic felt that although it wasn’t a bad record, its slower and more considered direction fell short of the standard New Found Glory had previously set.
That mixed reaction wasn’t limited to critics either. Chad Gilbert has since said that the album wasn’t particularly well accepted by fans when it first arrived.
Speaking to the Recording Academy years later, Gilbert reflected on how attitudes towards Coming Home had completely changed, saying that while many fans didn’t embrace it in 2006, years later it seemed like “everybody loves that record”. He described it as New Found Glory showing that they were capable of writing songs with completely different elements to what people expected from them.
That reassessment has continued. Retrospective writing has increasingly treated Coming Home as an overlooked part of the band’s catalogue, while Gilbert has also described it as one of the most requested albums from their back catalogue and noted that musicians from other bands regularly tell him it’s their favourite New Found Glory record.
Even the numbers on Album of the Year now paint a fairly positive picture, with Coming Home currently sitting at a 76 critic score and 71 user score.
Perhaps that’s the most interesting part of Coming Home turning 20. It wasn’t the New Found Glory album everyone necessarily wanted in 2006, but two decades have given people plenty of time to appreciate what the band were actually trying to do.
Rather than make another version of the records that had already made them successful, they took a risk and made something noticeably different.
Twenty years later, Coming Home might finally have found its audience! We’ll be spinning this one all day..