After cryptically teasing their return via social media, Yellowcard have officially ended their hiatus, revealing that they have signed to Equal Vision Records for their upcoming EP “Childhood Eyes”, produced by Neal Avron (Yellowcard, Fall Out Boy, Alanis Morisette, Good Charlotte).
Their new single of the same time title,“Childhood Eyes”, is available to stream now and arrives with a cinematic new video directed by Jordan Phoenix
The track is bursting with optimism for the next chapter of Yellowcard – a beloved band with such a unique talent for capturing the essence of living.
Speaking on the new single, William Ryan Key says: “I woke up in the middle of the night with the chorus ringing in my head. I grabbed my phone off of the night stand and started typing away, squinting in the dark. This was months before we even started demoing the EP. When we started writing I threw the idea in the hat at the last minute, picked up a guitar to try and put music to the melody in my head for the first time, and Childhood Eyes was born. This is a song about being defeating, let down, and deceived time and again, but still managing to find your creative soul and carry on. I think it captures the spirit of Yellowcard, both old and new.”
Yellowcard announced that their newest EP “Childhood Eyes” will be out on July 7th via Rude Records/Equal Vision Records. It is the band’s first musical offering since the band’s 2016 self-titled album.
When Yellowcard broke up in 2017, that was meant to be the end. It wasn’t like 2008 when the band went on hiatus but always had the intention of returning. This was different. After a number of line-up changes since first forming in 1997, the four-piece of Ryan Key (vocals/guitar), Sean Mackin (violin/vocals), Ryan Mendez (lead guitar) and Josh Portman (bass) was actually done. Finished. No more. They didn’t want to play together again. After two decades, they’d reached the end of the line. They played one final concert on March 25 2017, then put the band to bed.
Of course, everybody knows the story doesn’t end there.
Almost exactly five-and-a-half years after that gig, Yellowcard got back together in 2022 for Riot Fest, running through Ocean Avenue (and then some) to celebrate that iconic fourth record’s 20th anniversary. When the band first reunited, the idea of new music was floated and then dismissed, but a month after Riot Fest, the members found themselves at an Airbnb in Austin, TX with the intention of writing some. It marked the first time in a long time that the band had collaborated and written together as a unit, and while starting work on this next phase of their career, they found themselves walking back in time a little to move forward. Not, as you might think, to 2003 and Ocean Avenue—the album that had brought them back together—but rather to 2007 and their sixth studio album.
“When we got to Austin,” says Key, “we sat down and poured some whiskeys and we started talking about what we wanted to do and what we wanted out of it. We knew we were writing an EP which meant we only got five songs, so we had to really make them special. And I think there was an immediate sense of bringing it back to Paper Walls—the idea that we need to make something that we’re proud of, but also something that gets Yellowcard fans excited about what we’re doing. So at that point, we picked up the guitars and started demoing and, honestly, I think these five songs could have just been on that record in 2007. And I love that.”
He’s both right and wrong. For while the five songs that make up Childhood Eyes absolutely capture the spirit and essence of that record—its powerful yet tender anthems, its open-hearted emotional vulnerability, its sense of wide-eyed wonder against the odds—they’re also riddled with the band’s experiences of the decade and a half since it came out. Indeed, as much as it’s an EP that looks back to that time, it’s one that couldn’t have been made without the intervening years. Take, for example, how opener “Three Minutes More”—a breakneck burst of impassioned not-quite-pop-punk—references ‘a radio repeating hooks of my own’, or how final song “The Places We’ll Go”—a gorgeous, plaintive look back at a life that both was and could have been—ruminates on how fast time flies. ‘Twenty years passed/It’s wild how fast/Were we ever that young?’ sings Key with sad resignation, but also optimism. Both his voice and the song itself swell with hope for what’s still to come despite all that’s gone.
Fans can pre-order/pre-save “Childhood Eyes” now!
