After ten years a band’s career normally goes one of two ways. You’re either resigned to nostalgia touring while continuing to crank out songs that follow whatever formula has enabled you to have a lasting livelihood, or you shake things up and redefine yourself. While the former is normally a safe way to ensure that steady checks come in the mail, the latter, although risky, is the only way to grow as musicians and in some cases allows your band to reach new ears and expand your fan-base.

This being said, it was with great reservation that I listened to Switchfoot’s Hello Hurricane, fully expecting the seventh album from the San Diego based radio darlings to be a tepid rehashing of the super sweetened pop rock that has allowed them to maintain a following for three times as long as the average band’s lifespan. What I found was surprising. While there are still radio friendly singles such as “Mess of Me” and heartfelt odes to love and all its intricacies like “Enough” and “Yet,” this album shows an urge by Switchfoot to slough off some of its dead skin and show something fresh and new. The opening track, “Needle and Haystack Life,” retains enough of the band’s well known elements to appeal to their die-hard fans but adds some very aggressive guitar and drum work. That’s right; Switchfoot has written its first banger. Even the aforementioned “Mess of Me,” the first single off of Hello Hurricane, has more of an in your face feel thanks to very angular guitar riffing and double-picking and some interesting vocal/guitar harmonizing.

The entire album isn’t groundbreaking; some tracks find Switchfoot falling back on their formulaic pop roots, but there is enough of a push to update and improve their sound to surprise and impress fans and non fans alike. Whether this little experiment will pay off for the veteran multi-million selling group remains to be seen, but it is a good effort nonetheless that results in an excellent listen.