When I was growing up and being a mall-rat in Knox City shopping centre, there was this shop called Kenny’s Cardiology. It was the sort of place you bought expensive wrapping paper, those calico bears you could write your name on and fake crystal angels with twee messages about friendship and motherhood. Good Charlotte’s Cardiology is rather different to Kenny’s. But there is a connection…

Good Charlotte themselves have admitted this album has a distinctive Blink 182 feel about it, which is why it probably takes me back to those times when I was hanging out at Knox City, throwing the pickles from cheeseburgers at my friends. But it doesn’t have the punk rock thing , the fuck-yeah, that I remember from my food-court days.

There are fifteen tracks, they get monotonous. The vocals get winey. There’s no big notable moment, although there are higher lights. The image on the front is awesome (bleeding heart tree – rock!) and one of their songs shares a name with a VERY cool Smashing Pumpkins track that harks back to my mall-rat, previously mentioned era.

I don’t know. It’s almost like these guys have outgrown their angst but won’t admit it. Its too punk to be pop; its too poppy to be anything substantial. Like the guys in the band are trying to get girlfriends and have lost their, well, whatever boys who like girls have when they get one.

I can’t tell if I still sort of like it because I am too old and it would suit younger listeners, or if I think I would have liked it when I was a grotty little suburban grunger. Whichever, I am really not into this. I think there’s a bit too much Kenny and a little too little Good Charlotte in this Cardiology.

Buy it if you want to remember pimples, homework and a strange underlying feeling of being different.

Good Charlotte’s track Like It’s Her Birthday appears below.