Photos by: Megan McGinnis
On Friday, May 23, 2025, friends, fans and music lovers gathered at the Bottlerocket Social Hall in Allentown, PA for a night of good company and even better music. The lineup included performers Eastern Pine, Mud Whale, Afloat, and Old Neon. As Old Neon took the stage, doing their last soundcheck and tuning before they jumped into their set, bassist Sean Michael looked over to guitarist Bea Langer and asked, “What are you smiling about? What’s got you so happy over there?” Langer replied, “I’m just excited to play live for this crowd.”
Old Neon had a lot to celebrate besides just playing to a crowd that was excited to see them, as the Pittsburgh-based pop-punk band released their latest EP, Resolution, on the same day. The five-track Resolution is the band’s first project that was not self-produced. They worked with The Wonder Years guitarist Matt Brasch at his Philadelphia studio, Nick Steinborn for mixing and Will Yip for mastering. Michael talked about the process of working with Brash saying, “It was nice to pick someone else’s brain and Matt (Brasch) was able to get the absolute best out of each of our performances.”
This approach to creation helped Old Neon streamline their collaboration. For their earlier releases, they would come up with song ideas and then work on their parts individually, before trying to get together to bring it all to life. For this project, they spent full days together focused only on building this EP, where the goal was quality over quantity. Their efforts paid off, as these new songs will no doubt appease fans who have been there since the beginning, while also attracting a new and untapped audience. Drummer Zach Pollack said, “We really wanted this EP to sound good and be competitive and modern like it would fit in on a playlist of other pop punk artists and not sound out of place. Some of our earlier releases may have been too polished, but this one sounds a bit more like us.”
There is no question that these songs were made for listening to on repeat. One of the singles from the EP called “Nobody’s Burden” is a pop-punk classic anthem just in time for summer so you can jam with the windows down and the volume up while you’re in the car.
The band was in no short supply of song ideas going into recording for Resolution. According to lead vocalist Drew Sipos, ideas can come from anywhere: “Sometimes I will just come up with an instrumental, and then I will sing anything, nonsense even, and see if I can pick out any words. Or I will have a couple of lines I know I really want to work in, so I make a rough outline so that I can present it to people even if it’s not finished and we go from there.” Working with Brasch and focusing on their production, Old Neon explained that they used a ranking system for their ideas this time. Guitarist, Mike McInnes, said, “The more we started playing live, our set time changed and got longer, so with the rating system we were able to ask ourselves, what do we really connect with? Before we would wonder, is it done? But this time, everything sat better.”
Another positive of working with Brasch and the rating system is that they could lean into the experience Brasch has from his own music career. Michael said, “We got the fruits of Matt’s labor who has collected the best knowledge from the last 20 years. He’s worked with producers who have worked with bands like Fall Out Boy, so we get to be the beneficiaries of that.”
While Resolution is an authentic and cohesive story, their early releases deserve some love and a listen as well. The song “NATALIE” from their 2023 album Can’t Fucking Wait is one of their most popular songs on Spotify and of it, McInnes said, “All of the songs are different. For me, some songs might not have the hardest guitar part, but they are just fun to play with a crowd (like NATALIE).” As far as which songs they are most excited to play live from the new EP, Sipos said it changes often: “There’s something on there (Resolution) for everyone. Today I’m in a “People Pleaser” mood, but the last few days I was really feeling “Baby Blue”.”
Their appearance at the Bottlerocket Social Hall was just one of the recent stops on their tour. They were in Philadelphia the night before and have played festival shows like the Four Chord Music Festival, a favorite for Pittsburgh live music lovers. While they will continue to grow and play even more venues, there is something so special about playing more intimate spaces like the Bottlerocket Social Hall. Pollack said, “Small spaces like this are where we all fell in love with this type of music.”
Watching the show live was incredible. Old Neon brought so much energy and enthusiasm that it was hard not to feel like you were part of their inner circle. They had a lot of friends and family in the crowd, but also fellow musicians that they had met along the way. It is hard to imagine that just a couple of years ago they were all strangers just looking to start a band. Brought together from Craiglist and Instagram ads to singing their songs back to a crowd full of people who knew the words.
In these times of Spotify AI-generated labels and genres, ‘Indie Poptimism’ is a category of pop-punk that has shown up on my own Spotify Wrapped, and I believe it kind of fits Old Neon. They certainly are true to pop-punk and a lot of their songs are so relatable that you just feel better when you listen to them. When asked what they would proclaim as their own AI-generated category, they settled on ‘Lasagna Core.’ An inside joke between them and two other local bands, Crash Nebula and Find Ethel. If you want to find out what Lasagna Core means to you and how Old Neon embodies that sound, you’ll just have to give them a listen or, even better, catch them live!
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