It was followed up by 2003’s ‘A Present For Everyone’, which was the last record they released prior to their 2005 split. In June 2017, Busted flew to Los Angeles to perform their first American gig as a reformed band at the Troubadour.

And that’s exactly what the lads have done with this exceptional, exhilarating and at times moving album. All my friends’ is another weird one, both optimistic but sneering and doesn’t reflect really well on any of the singers. But as an album that "defines" the trío, this is the one, it runs light years around their first two albums, and then some. Factor in the dated electronic embellishments of Race To Mars and the face-screwingly twee twinkles on All My Friends, and what’s already the most sanitised, marketable approximation of the genre becomes even more difficult to stomach. While Night Driver stood as an entity resembling a fun-filled holiday, Half Way There as a record is a rapturous homecoming and I will happily go on record to say; Half Way There is the best Pop Punk album of the past five years!Only a few people I know within the music scene actually take umbrage with people asking about their old band and it being held as a point of reference for that person. It’s why any sort of nuance is pitched right out of the window, something that gives an oddly self-congratulatory air to What Happened To Your Band?

While Night Driver was an interesting sonic diversion, Half Way There gets back to doing what the band does best. It’s judgemental, poorly written and hard to pinpoint a moral or overarching topic beyond lines about where friends are in their lives and how they’re fat now and how the reminisce about bar fights and have faith that they’ll (I’m unsure if they is just the band or the band and their friends) be fine despite being old and drifting towards obscurity. These are child-friendly songs that talk about how great the band’s childhood was; reaching for their dreams; and getting that girl.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.