This review was written purely to satisfy my own curiosities. It wasn’t for any particular website or reason, I just fancied writing it and putting it on here.

I was fourteen-years-old in 2008, and high school was my waking reality. It was an endless slog that I wished I could be rid of. I wanted nothing more than to grow up, gain my independence, and leave home to see the world I’d spent so long learning about. I was irritated by my teachers and they were irritated by me; I spent hours daydreaming about girls who knew my name but didn’t exactly want my company; any social capital I could gain seemed to be based entirely on appearance, fashion sense, and hobbies. Put simply, my high school was a hotbed for judgement, heartache, and boredom. They were the slow times.

But then I left that high school in 2010, and as I grew up and went through university I learned that with age came tiresome responsibilities and a whole host of problems I’d never anticipated. Almost half of my lifetime suddenly went by in an instant and I underwent changes beyond my control. The freedom to have stupid crushes on girls who hated me, or to care about my fashion sense and social reputation, they were suddenly fading lights I couldn’t switch back on.

Until now I’d mostly forgotten all the bad stuff or, as explained just there, I’d forgotten about the stress they used to cause me. Because, in the end, what ultimately defined my high school experience were the wonderful friends I kept and the fond memories I have of us all. We made our way through those years as the group of kids who were stared at (and occasionally made fun of) by the popular group. We weren’t “edgy” and we didn’t belong to one particular group, but we were an odd assortment of emos, misfits, nerds, shy kids, queer kids, gamers, kids with glasses and over-sized backpacks, and those kids who were allergic to sports — obscure enough to draw negative attention but sure enough in ourselves to be proud of who we were.

In many ways, though, mostly because of the march of time, we really were identical to the kids who made fun of us: despite our differences, we were all unified by our ignorance of the future. Our typically British lukewarm summer nights on the local parks would come to an end soon. Our sleepless sleepovers (that were simply glorified gaming sessions for us) were soon to be no more. And all those irritating teachers, and all those high school crushes, and all those arguments about who was coolest, they would all become pieces of a simpler past we could no longer reach.

They were the fast times after all.

Never has an album cover managed to catch everything I’ve just typed there quite so accurately, but with its affectionately dreadful font, and with its MySpace-era teenage romance title, and by preserving a split second of insecurity, inexperience, and clumsy romance between boy and girl, Fast Times at Barrington High has done it. In its own small way this is a very special album, and with a bit convincing I think you could have anybody believe that it’s the quintessential album for white suburban kids like me, who never fit in with the in-crowd but were never without the love of their loyal friends either. But it goes deeper than that, and quite significantly too. This is an album that inhabits a world full of insecurity, innocence, and romantic clumsiness, and completely immerses you. Because it’s not just an album that’s concerned with these topics necessarily, it’s an album that’s concerned with protecting and preserving them as well. It’s as nostalgic about the formative, character-building nature of high school politics as I am, but it wants to tell its own story without the influence or pressure of outside disturbances, namely adults and authority figures. The stories in these songs are told by whispered voices hiding under bed sheets as parents walk by outside. They’re told by hushed giggles behind corner stores while security guards make sure nobody’s smoking. It loudly gossips by the lockers in the corridors before stealing a few precious seconds in the school photography department’s darkroom.

All in all, this album is made up of real people in real places having real experiences, and it’s desperate to protect all of them.

It should come with a “for adolescents, by adolescents” label, because while the band might have been in their early twenties by the time this album was put together, they inhabit their former selves so accurately that the imagery presented in the lyrics goes beyond being evocative. I hear lines like “Last night, I knew what to say / but you weren’t there to hear it” (from ‘About a Girl’), I look at the album cover, and I’m reminded of some experience with a girl I probably dreamed up but never enacted. I hear “I hope, before the night is through, one fumbled touch will finally hit the spot” (from ‘After the Last Midtown Show’), I look at the album cover again, and I’m reminded of how awkward it felt to touch another human being affectionately for the first time. I hear “Don’t you wonder why, suddenly, we’re all running out of time?” (from ‘Summer Hair = Forever Young’), I look at the album cover, and I realise that it’s the kind of lyric that I should have appreciated on a deeper level while I thought I had still had time to waste. I was living in the fast times of my own high school but without any clue that they would soon slip through my hands.

Now, all of the evocative high school imagery in the world would be for nought if the tunes weren’t up to scratch. I don’t think I’d be too interested in a William Beckett slam poetry hour, for example, but when he’s delivering ace choruses and the band are delivering sweet harmonies behind him, so many of my weak spots are tickled. There’s something about emo that makes me so bloody susceptible to it. Nothing here is particularly adventurous or extravagant, but it doesn’t have to be for me to fall so madly in love. The majority of the songs here are all structured to be direct, to be instant, to land on rock radio stations, and it suits the overall aesthetic it’s shooting for. ‘About a Girl’ is a begrudging, slightly subversive love song that’s in complete denial of itself (“I’m not in love / this is not my heart”) but there’s something cutely Britpop hanging in the periphery of the verses — it’s those clean, syncopated guitars — and the chorus is perfectly streamlined and absolute dynamite as a result. The same could be said for basically every chorus this album contains, but there’s a reason ‘About a Girl’ was the biggest hit this album produced.

The first song I ever encountered from this record was ‘Summer Hair = Forever Young’, which arrives second on the tracklist, and is considerably louder and heavier than anything else here. Drummer Andrew Mrotek blasts his snare to pieces in the intro before Adam Siska’s sludgy bass production drives the verses. There’s then a subtle mood shift that hints towards a move into major tonality just before the chorus, which means that, by the time the chorus arrives, it has everything it needs to be a four-chord gem. “I’ll never let you go, don’t ever forget / tell me you’ll remember, forever young” — lyrically, it’s a plea of desperation from one teenager to another, as they beg their friend (or young romance) to never forget their relationship, this moment, this summer; melodically, it’s stayed in my head ever since I first heard it. You could extend this ability to be intensely memorable to the “Come on a Monday, come on a Tuesday / they’ll never know” of ‘His Girl Friday’, the ‘If this is a test, I’m losing my shit / would it kill you to care as much as I did?” of ‘The Test’, the “So pick the poison and pour yourself a glass” and “These are the fast tiiiiiiii-ha-ah-ah-aymes” of ‘Coppertone’.

But encapsulating it all — the memories, the nostalgia, the melodies — and rising above the rest is the one slow-burner on show, ‘After the Last Midtown Show’, which gives me feelings of such intense nostalgia that it’s actually quite hard to listen to now. It’s the album’s best moment and its crowning jewel. Its first two verses are presumably autobiographical, but in telling a story so personal they manage to echo experiences of my own. I might as well recount them to contextualise things. You see, I finished high school in the summer of 2010 which, at the time, was one of the hottest summers we Brits had experienced in some time. I was sixteen-years-old and completely free of responsibility, so I spent a lot of that summer walking from my house in that hazy summer dusk to see my friends in the neighbourhood. We’d either hang out at the park until it hit 11pm and it got too cold to stay out, or we’d walk to one of my friends’ houses and play video games until we dozed off at 4am, or we’d just pick a direction and walk for what felt like miles. So when I hear “… Midnight on the streets / brightly dusted with a neon light”, I’m taken back there instantly. Nostalgia is a cruel beast because I know these midnight walks I took were never that special, and yet I can’t help but I feel like I didn’t appreciate them enough.

“Right here, the best days of our lives / Is this coincidence or a sign?”

During that summer in 2010, I was also knee-deep into a long-term long-distance relationship that was as passionate, possessive and formative as only teenage romances can be. I took it so fucking seriously, and taking it so seriously was one of the reasons I fell in love with emo. She had her ear to the ground for pop punk when I met her, which was ten years ago. She’s married to somebody else now. For little old me back then, she was the epitome of cool, and that summer was the only summer we had where we were truly settled and happy with one another. The previous summer, in 2009, we barely saw each other, and the following summer in 2011, we broke up. I spent June, July and August 2010 taking long train journeys to see her, and her to me. I’d usually travel up on the Thursday or Friday and go home on the Sunday evening. The weather was so beautiful that year and every morning we spent together I’d wake up before her, the sun would be sneaking in through the window, and I’d lie there as the rest of her house woke up. The clutter of teaspoon on saucer from the kitchen, her dad trudging up and down the stairs, the birds and dogs making noises outside. So further on in the song, when that second verse opens with the following scenario (“The morning light fights through the cracks, cascading across the bed, and you are mine / your parents start to wake for work, between the sheets I’ll keep a watchful eye”), I might as well be the protagonist of this song. Her parents knew about our relationship but that didn’t mean I wanted them to be involved, and hiding under the bed sheets with my girlfriend gave us that extra level of protection. The chorus, “I swear we spent most afternoons somewhere in the act”, perfectly captures that moment where, after months of waiting to be in the same room, and after hours of us waiting to be alone, her parents finally went shopping or went to work, and we could be completely alone without any outside interference.

It’s the constant presence of potential outside interference from parents, or teachers, or any other 40-something authority figure, that ultimately tied my thoughts about Fast Times together and put the bow on top. It’s not the strongest song on offer, but ‘Beware! Cougar!’ immediately follows ‘After the Last Midtown Show’, and it’s the cautionary tale of how our male lead fell out of love with his teenage girlfriend and into the arms of a rebound much older than him. Realising she’s too old for him, he snaps out of it immediately (“It’s no fun on the sidelines, don’t write a word because I won’t reply”). That cougar is just the same as those parents walking by the bedroom door as boy and girl hide under the bed sheets in ‘After the Last Midtown Show’. Those parents might as well be the security guard they hide from in the same song as one of them keeps watch while the other smokes. The security guard they’re hiding from while they smoke might as well be the teachers who don’t know they’re exchanging sweet nothings in the photography department’s darkroom (‘His Girl Friday’). Those teachers might as well be the steady hands of time that will gradually erode any innocence, purity, or privacy that this album is desperate to protect (‘Summer Hair = Forever Young’, ‘One More Weekend’).

It doesn’t fire on all cylinders at all times. ‘Rumored Nights’ could work harder at its chorus; ‘Crowded Room’s repeated bridge section could be much less annoying if it so desired; ‘Paper Chase’ sounds like something left off the final Enema of the State tracklisting. But in the simplest terms, Fast Times at Barrington High kindly reinforces something I reluctantly believe about myself, and something I believe that we all think even if we don’t want to. It tells me, despite being a perfectly ordinary white kid in suburban England with an utterly unremarkable and common upbringing, that my memories are more precious than anybody else’s. Fast Times is those long walks through the summer nights in my hometown, and it’s those friends I walked with. It’s falling asleep while watching my friends playing Left 4 Dead 2 and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it’s those sleepless sleepovers. It’s that long-distance relationship, and everything I learned from it, and all those train journeys. It’s Zombieland and Toy Story 3 and Dumbledore’s death. It’s the image of a boy sheepishly shuffling towards an equally shy girl on a bench, hoping that something can break the ice for the both of them. They were the fast times and I didn’t hold them close enough as they were happening. So with the summer now approaching (it’s April 2019 here), and with each daily sunset lasting longer and dusting my average British housing estate with a faint yellow glow, it’s time to spin this record, walk around my neighbourhood, and make sure my memories remain as special as they feel.