Well I guess this is growing up…

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Josh Langhoff: “Two childhood friends spark up an unlikely romance during their 10th high school reunion, but quickly find that living in the past is easier than building a future together.” Has anyone seen this movie? Probably not — but maybe you’ve lived it, the trail of debt leading from high school to recognizing yourself in John Hughes movies, to getting out into “the world” and seeing your future stretch before you, a football field without end zones or goal posts. Coming of age is hard work, and culturemongers are happy to sell hand-me-down nostalgias to ease the pain. Messing around on the piano as a teen, I would’ve assigned these chord changes the following affects: V = determination, vi = dread, IV = comfort. In Bruce Cockburn’s words, kicking at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight. And this salve of a chord progression is just… out there! Waiting for anyone to pick it up and use it! If you’ve got a knifelike falsetto and a catalog of spiffy guitar sounds like these Foster people, even better.
[8]

Will Adams: The coming of age is contained in the song. It begins uncertainly, a wall of noise swallowing a lonely guitar pluck. Even at the chorus, where the guitars start buzzing and the drums start punching, Mark Foster hides behind the backing vocals. That is until he bursts through the mix with a triumphant declaration of the title at the second chorus. From then on, everything about the song — the dense instrumentation, the swaths of reverb, the extended songwriting — sounds so confident and believable. I would say that I want to show this to my fifteen-year-old self and let him know that his time will come, but “Coming of Age” asserts that such an event doesn’t have to take place when we’re young. It’s a continuous process that requires one to keep reaching for that declaration.
[9]

Tara Hillegeist: Jesus. Look, I know “sounds like a bored version of [insert Fueled by Ramen band name here]” is kind of this band’s shtick, but at a certain point there needs to be some effort put forward, here. Titling a song “Coming of Age” implies maturity on their part: a cliche that obvious has to have some justification behind it, right? But all that’s changed is the layers of haze have lifted, and only to Foster the People’s detriment. Without any production to make Foster and friends sound like a group of deranged basement-dwellers (something that gave undeniable charm, or at least charge, to the chorus of “Pumped Up Kicks”), there isn’t any excuse left for how listlessly Foster’s guitar fails to prop up his mumbly-mouthed vocals. Despite how obnoxious their generic counterparts often are, at least I never have to ask myself if they like the music they’re playing. The Beach Boys aping that closes out the track only serves to remind us all how little they have in common, besides a summery surf-pop aesthetic — something the Boys worked over, often painfully, to give depth, while the People remain content to use it as a prop. As a lifelong stan for the Wilson brothers, I am mortally offended by such an hommage maladroit.
[0]

Brad Shoup: It’s so ’80s AOR, it makes their Grammys appearance with the Beach Boys look even more ill-considered. Which I thought would’ve been impossible. It’s a Killers best-case scenario: snacky riffs and an ambience that wraps you up like night does a car on the highway. Shame about Mark Foster, whose falsetto has lost some malleability. The lost-weekend Wilson coos at the end are nice, though.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: When this started out, dreamy and romantic, I found myself in sudden panic. I don’t have to care about these assholes in freakin’ 2014 do I? I held my breath, dreading the Killers-sized chorus that would lock in “Coming of Age” as a bona fide comeback from a group that barely had a come-up in the first place. Imagine my solace on hearing the damp squib of a hook that followed, a musty fart of a refrain not even sharp enough to be offensively unpleasant. I’d report my feelings of relief upon arriving at the end of this tune and confirming that Foster the People is indeed as irrelevant as ever, but relief is a bit strong. I’m somewhere between vaguely bored and a little bit hungry.
[4]

Jessica Doyle: If my younger daughter ever hears “Pumped Up Kicks” and gets inexplicably queasy, I’ll have to explain: I kept getting that song in my head during the last weeks she was in utero. I developed a fever; she needed an emergency C-section at 37 weeks’ gestation; the earworm continued. She now speaks in complete sentences; I’m still muttering “better run, better run faster than my bullet” at the slightest provocation. And “Coming of Age” is pretty damn slight for a song that wants to get away with pronouncing “surrender” with the emphasis on the final syllable. I don’t take away much more than a mild nostalgia for that one Coldplay song that borrowed from that one Kraftwerk song; no threat to my immune system, thankfully.
[3]

Anthony Easton: The hand claps are nice, the percussion isn’t too obnoxious, and the woo-oos give it some texture, but I feel ripped off instead of leavened.
[5]

David Sheffieck: The fuzzy guitar riff is surprisingly strong, but this quickly devolves into the most generic, tuneless mess I’ve heard in a while. And when the lead Foster wails “age” — and then just wails — it’s nails on a chalkboard. How can anyone even take that guy seriously?
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The “Atlas” guitars came in and I knew its dreams; the MGMT chorus came in and I knew its ambitions. As silent majority rock/Big Music/pick your pith goes, it could be worse.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Between the soaring, angst-free vocal and guitars that manage to sound crunchy without a trace of grit, everything here shimmers in high ’80s style, as if the band had grown every bit as bored of “Pumped Up Kicks” as I did and decided, rightfully, that the slept-on follow-up single “Helena Beat” pointed a more sustainable direction towards the future. Unlike “Helena Beat,” though, there’s more pastiche than actual song here, and “just like an animal, I protect my pride” is a truly cringeworthy attempt at wordplay. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: They’ve discovered overdubbing! A squeak pilfered from Ezra Koenig, multitracked Mumforded vocals, twang guitar from god knows where, recorded as if from far-flung corners of the Milky Way, in service to a frontman who has the audacity or lack of self-consciousness to pair “Nothing to say” and “Coming of age” in the same verse. But these guys will outlive them all, including the Milky Way, because “even when I’m wrong I tend to think I’m right.”
[5]

Megan Harrington: The sound of wind over an ice bank? The Brian Wilson surfer pop fade out? “I got nothing to say,” Mark Foster sings and he’s dead serious. “Coming of Age” is Foster shorthand for stuffing as many pop/rock tropes as he can fit into his composition, but only in the most boring and cursory way. It’s sophomore year and he knows it’s catchy, but he doesn’t know why. He’s giving the instructor fontrum. 
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: A new year has arrived, and that means it is time for you to make a new single! You and your bandmates find yourself in a strange situation: you have had one big crossover hit in the past, but it is becoming clear you are on the fast track to one-hit wonder-dom. Even worse, your one hit has been made mostly unplayable thanks to America’s gun control woes. Unless Congress gets its act together (ha!), your new single might very well be your last chance at success. You and your bandmates sit anxious, brainstorming. Three ideas stick out, and it’s up to you to choose! If you decide to try something experimental and daring, turn to page 76. If you want to make an EDM-inspired song, turn to page 31. If you want to play it incredibly safe to the point of numbing boredom, turn to page…
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