New Glow

Composition

New Glow embraces much more elements of mainstream styles such as hip hop and electronic dance music than Matt and Kim's previous punk-influenced works, through there are still components punk featured on the record. It opens with "Hey Now", containing a pounding drum beat, handclaps, low-octave brass instruments, group chants and an air horn in its instrumentation.

Critical reception

New Glow garnered mixed reviews from critics upon release, garnering an aggregate 52 out of 100 from Metacritic based on nine reviews. Calling it the act's least enjoyable record so far, Allmusic journalist Tim Sendra felt that the album's departure from a less punk-influenced style to a more polished and mainstream sound caused it to lose the crazy energy and spirit that heavily contributed to the quality of their past releases. Jon Dolan, a critic for Rolling Stone, gave it a similar rating, writing "their all-smiles assault can be adorable, at least in moderate doses. But unless you're the kind of person who throws your hands in the air to a salvo like, "We're riding bikes through red lights/We're bulletproof," the cuteness starts to wear thin pretty fast."

Corey Henderson of Exclaim! praised New Glow as a fun album. However, he felt that the album should've had more of a hip hop sound which he called its best aspect than a bit of a tiresome clean casual sound that fits with some of the tracks but render uninteresting on others.