Lifetime

Some artists are better off dead, and until 2007, Lifetime seemed to be one of them. The punk group disbanded in 1997, but its influence on subsequent bands—Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday, Newfound Glory—gave the group a kind of post-mortem cachet. Lifetime’s breakup after its excellent 1997 album, Jersey’s Best Dancers, also gave the band a cut-down-in-their-prime legacy that had more than a few people demanding a reunion. That came in 2005, when some one-off reunion gigs cohered into something lasting. It was a risky move, considering music history is littered with underwhelming reunions, and Lifetime raised the stakes by signing to Decaydance, the label run by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz. But the group’s 2007 self-titled record hardly sounds like a cash-in; it follows Lifetime’s thoughtful melodic punk template faithfully, neither rehashing nor taking risks.

Updated 09/22/2009