Hope, Healing and Heavy Riffs: Inside New Found Glory’s Most Uplifting Album in Years
New Found Glory drummer Cyrus Bolooki discusses recording their new album Listen Up! while Chad Gilbert went through chemotherapy, honorary member Amy Shark and returning to Australia.
Words Thomas Jackson // Image Angelea Yoder
The godfathers of pop-punk, New Found Glory have just released their new album Listen Up!. The album is a joyful celebration of life. It’s a collection of songs about resilience and hope through hard times. The album's sunny disposition is juxtaposed by guitarist Chad Gilbert’s ongoing cancer battle as he went through chemotherapy during the recording process.
To learn more about Listen Up!, The Note spoke with New Found Glory drummer Cyrus Bolooki while he was at home before flying out to Nashville for some intimate record release shows. It's one of the rare occasions where - after almost 30 years together as a band - Bolooki is nervous for a show. This is because they're doing an intimate 200-person performance featuring new songs debuting live alongside deep cuts that haven't been played in years. On top of this, Bolooki has been practising and rehearsing for when he performs with LA ska-punk legends Goldfinger, who sometimes tap him on the shoulder for their revolving door of guest touring musicians.
Having touring musicians step in is something that New Found Glory has had to replicate in their own lineup. This is, in part, due to Gilbert’s ongoing battle with cancer, the band have had to have various touring musicians join them on international tours. When they were just in Adelaide for their Good Things Festival sideshow, they were joined by Dan O’Connor from Four Year Strong on lead guitar and Will Pugh from Cartel on keys and rhythm guitar. It inadvertently created this pop-punk supergroup.
“We’re very lucky. We have amazing friends,” Bolooki beams in front of his drum kit in his home studio and practice space. “We have this extended ‘NFG family’ we like to call it, and it's from a lot of the bands that we've toured with or become friends with, or in some ways either influenced or been around as we were coming up. The only bad thing is that it was like a supergroup, right? All of these guys are in other bands, so they're not always free. If one person's not free, luckily for us, we can call somebody else.”
Listen Up! is an album that Bolooki believes is their strongest in years. It contrasts 2023’s acoustic album Make The Most Of It, which focused on what was going on with Gilbert’s sickness, but with heavier lyrics. Gilbert wanted to make sure they don't just focus on the negative and share that there are positives in all of this.
“I think we all - and even Chad - we all relied on each other and the bonds that we have created over the 30 years [together]. Even with Dan, we've known him and Four Year Strong for almost 15, 16 years. Even Steve Evetts, who produced this record, has worked with us before, so you know we're all very familiar with each other. We can all be very candid with each other if needed, and we can always tell if something is not going right. What happened on this record that hasn't necessarily happened in times in the past is that if Chad's health was taking a toll on him for that day - because it really was a day-to-day kind of situation with him especially as the days wore on - as it got later in a day, sometimes whatever medicines he was on or maybe he didn't have a good night the night before, that kind of stuff would get to him.
“What was able to happen was [that] Dan was able to come in and play some of the parts that Chad had started to record… that way we don't have to worry about missing out on it. A lot of times, what we would do is when Chad went home for the evening, we would sit there with Jordan [Pundik, vocals] and sing stuff and do all the things that Chad doesn't do. The next day when we got back together, it’s like ‘Okay, let's all listen to what we did last night’, and there's a confidence there that we all kind of know the blueprint. So it's not like we're going to be far off, and we didn't have to waste time or cut a session short or extend the recording sessions because we also didn't have that big of a window because of Chad's treatments.
“The most important thing is his health here, and you're not going to delay those or really move those around just to get a record done,” he continues. “But then we also had tours to do. We had to worry about vinyl getting out and all this. So it was like a lot of moving parts there.”
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Before their Good Things Festival shows in December 2025, New Found Glory were last in Australia in 2017 for their 20 Years of Pop Punk tour. Bolooki explains that this wasn’t by intention, Gilbert’s sickness, a world pandemic and closed borders kept New Found Glory from visiting Australian shores. So even though they were just here, New Found Glory may be back to share Listen Up! with Australia.
“Although I don't have dates to give you, I will pretty much love to go on record by saying that there’s no way we should go an entire album cycle without coming back to Australia,” Bolooki shares excitedly.
“We have really put in an effort over the past 18 months to get ourselves back to a lot of these territories, Australia included. These Good Things sideshows and the festivals were awesome. So I mean, I'm already trying to look forward to the next time, and yeah, it might not be a festival. We might need to go on our own, or maybe it is a festival. Maybe it's a support tour, whatever it is. We're trying to look at all that stuff.”
At Good Things Festival Brisbane, New Found Glory did a surprise secret set with Amy Shark. Shark revealed that this was a long overdue collaboration as there were plans in the works - that never eventuated due to schedule conflicts - for her to be one of the replacement touring guitarists for Gilbert while he was recovering. Bolooki reveals that all parties involved thought performing together was awesome, and when they come back to Australia, something could happen again.
“There's no way that we would go [to Australia] and not let her know we're coming,” Bolooki explains enthusiastically.
“Something would have to happen in some capacity. Honestly, she'd probably just want to hang out at the shows as a fan because she loves it. Or if we could get her up on stage, or I don't know, I would go out there and I would be her backing band if I could. That would be fun. It was really cool, it was a very special day that popped up out of the blue for us, and we jumped on it.”
Listen Up! by New Found Glory is out now. Listen here.
