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**Taking Back Sunday - Happiness Is: The Sound of Growing Up (Whether You Like It or Not)**

★★★½

There's something beautifully tragic about watching your favorite angsty teenagers turn into responsible adults. Taking Back Sunday's sixth studio album, "Happiness Is," serves as a bittersweet reminder that even the most eternally youthful bands must eventually trade their skinny jeans for something with a more forgiving waistband. Released in 2014, this collection finds the Long Island quintet grappling with middle age while desperately clinging to the melodic hardcore sound that made them poster boys for early 2000s emo.

To understand where "Happiness Is" fits in Taking Back Sunday's evolution, you need to trace their journey through three pivotal releases. Their 2002 debut "Tell All Your Friends" was lightning in a bottle – a perfect storm of dual vocals, heartbreak anthems, and enough eyeliner to stock a Hot Topic. Songs like "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" became generation-defining singalongs, establishing the template for melodic post-hardcore that countless bands would imitate. It was raw, desperate, and absolutely electric.

Then came 2004's "Where You Want to Be," which saw the band attempting to mature while maintaining their emotional intensity. Despite lineup changes that saw guitarist/vocalist John Nolan leave for Straylight Run, the album proved TBS could evolve without losing their core identity. Tracks like "A Decade Under the Influence" showcased a more polished sound while retaining the cathartic release that made their debut so compelling. It was the sound of a band learning to channel their chaos into something more sustainable.

Fast-forward through various lineup shuffles, experimental phases, and the inevitable reunion tour, and we arrive at "Happiness Is" – an album that finds Taking Back Sunday in an identity crisis of the most relatable kind. How do you write songs about heartbreak when you're happily married? How do you maintain credibility in a genre built on youthful angst when you're pushing 40? The answer, it turns out, is to embrace the contradiction.

Musically, "Happiness Is" operates firmly within Taking Back Sunday's established wheelhouse of melodic post-hardcore, but with a notable shift toward accessibility. The production, courtesy of Mike Sapone, is crisp and radio-ready, occasionally at the expense of the raw energy that made their earlier work so visceral. Adam Lazzara's vocals have matured considerably, trading some of his trademark desperation for a more controlled delivery that suits the album's themes of acceptance and growth.

The album's strongest moments come when the band stops apologizing for getting older and instead celebrates it. "Flicker, Fade" serves as the album's emotional centerpiece, a gorgeous meditation on mortality that finds Lazzara contemplating his legacy with surprising grace. "Better Homes and Gardens" tackles domestic life with the same intensity the band once reserved for breakups, proving that suburban anxiety can be just as compelling as teenage heartbreak. Meanwhile, "Stood a Chance" delivers the kind of soaring chorus that made TBS festival headliners, complete with the dual vocal interplay that remains their secret weapon.

The album stumbles when it tries too hard to recapture past glories. "Beat Up Car" feels like a conscious attempt to write another "MakeDamnSure," while "They Don't Have a Clue" leans heavily on nostalgia without offering much substance. These moments highlight the central tension of "Happiness Is" – the uncomfortable space between honoring your past and accepting your present.

What saves the album from being a complete exercise in nostalgia is Taking Back Sunday's willingness to acknowledge their own aging. This isn't a band trying to fool anyone into thinking they're still 22; it's a group of musicians honestly grappling with what it means to be a "legacy act" while still having something to say. The result is imperfect but genuine, like running into your high school crush at a grocery store and realizing you're both okay with how things turned out.

"Happiness Is" may not recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of Taking Back Sunday's early work, but it doesn't need to. Instead, it offers something potentially more valuable: proof that growing up doesn't have to mean giving up. In an era where reunion tours often feel like elaborate funeral services for our youth, Taking Back Sunday chose to keep living instead. That might just be happiness enough.