LI Sound: Taking Back Sunday's 'Twenty' album offers the band's greatest hits

Maybe the most impressive thing about Taking Back Sunday’s greatest-hits compilation “Twenty” (Craft) is how it chronicles how much the Long Beach-based band has grown in its 20 years.

As important as its genre-defining debut “Tell All Your Friends” was in 2002, the band’s 2016 album “Tidal Wave” — somehow made with the same members, despite numerous personnel changes along the way — is even stronger. Taking Back Sunday, recently inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame as its youngest members, has managed the rare artistic feat of not just evolving, but also improving.

“Twenty,” which hits stores Jan. 11, is solid from start to finish, pulling songs from all seven of the band’s albums and including its new single, “All Ready to Go.” It’s a testament to the band’s catalog that there are plenty of great songs that could have been added here to take the collection in a different direction. Adding the gorgeous “Divine Intervention” and “New American Classic,” along with the regretful “Where My Mouth Is” show they can craft a rock ballad as well as anyone. “Error Operator” and “Death Wolf” show how hard they can hit. And, as a fan of their punkier side, I would have put “Stood a Chance” and “Twenty-Twenty Surgery” in this collection, along with “You Know How I Do.”

Nevertheless, “Twenty” shows what Taking Back Sunday has always done best — setting personal, often painful, stories to uplifting, edgy rock anthems. It’s what allowed “A Decade Under the Influence” and “MakeDamnSure” to establish them on rock radio, just as their powerful live shows made them arena headliners.

But the reason the band’s bond with its fans remains strong is in the poignant favorites like “One Eighty by Summer” and “Call Come Running.” It’s why the band — singer Adam Lazzara, guitarist/singer John Nolan, drummer Mark O’Connell and bassist Shaun Cooper — has launched a yearlong international tour that will take it to five continents to celebrate its 20th anniversary by playing “Tell All Your Friends” in its entirety, along with either all of “Where You Want to Be” or “New Again,” depending on a coin flip. (Though no Long Island date has been set on the anniversary tour yet, at least one show is expected to be added.) The tour is a chance to share in the special connection Taking Back Sunday has with its fans, the one that caused thousands of fans to leap over barricades and evade security so they could share in an unforgettable communal moment on the floor of the Nassau Coliseum when the band headlined there in 2006.

Of course, that was a moment that went well beyond music. It was a time for Long Islanders of a certain age to revel in something that was all their own, when the area’s music scene that they supported and helped build wasn’t just seen as cool, but also the focal point of the indie-rock world.

“Twenty” serves as a memento of that time, when Taking Back Sunday put two albums in the Top 3 within three years and helped lead a generation of young, post-hardcore indie rockers. But it also much more.

“Twenty” shows a band looking back to celebrate its accomplishments, but also ready to continue evolving as artists.

Taking Back Sunday’s greatest hits “Twenty” hits stores Jan. 11.

Chuck D as chairman

Fear not. Strong Island will definitely be represented in the Universal Hip Hop Museum.

Public Enemy’s Chuck D has been elected as the museum’s chairman of the celebrity board, as the organization formed “to celebrate and preserve the history of local and global hip-hop music and culture” moves into a new development phase.

“My life has been dedicated to the hip-hop genre, both serving it as an artist and curating it to share with others, and I want to carry that work over to the Universal Hip Hop Museum,” the Roosevelt rapper said in a statement. “The museum is what we need to organize as a collective and present its history while having a hand in its future.”

The museum, which recently secured $20 million in initial funding, plans to break ground in December 2019 at Bronx Point, not far from where hip-hop was born at a house party in the Bronx where DJ Kool Herc was playing. Organizers hope the museum will be open to the public in 2022.

“Chuck D is one of the most intelligent and well-respected MCs in the culture of hip-hop,” the museum’s chairman Kurtis Blow said in a statement. “The credibility he brings to our team is mammoth. He also understands the importance of the Universal Hip Hop Museum, and vows to let the world know via a star-studded celebrity board in the near future. Flame on!!!”

Contact The Long Island Sound at glenn.gamboa@newsday.com or follow @ndmusic on Twitter.