Avril Lavigne is back, and even though her tour dates here in the UK have been delayed another year, we have a great album to tide us over. Perhaps they’ll be another one before the aforementioned shows if we’re lucky. However, it will take some doing to beat this offering.

Love Sux is Lavigne’s seventh studio album which sees her take a step back to her classic pop-punk sound. Which quite frankly is a nice change after 2019’s Head Above Water. It was an excellent enough record that showed off her voice impressively but a little on the heavy side.

It seems that we’re all craving a hit of nostalgia that musicians, festivals, and club nights are taking full advantage of. Anniversary tours and lineups like that of When We Were Young Festival is big business. Apart from anything, the fans of yesteryear have a disposable income to spend now. There will be a lot of old-school Lavigne fans snapping up this album.

Opening with the in-your-face track ‘Cannonball,’ fans will know this is going to be a wild ride when Lavigne says, “And mother fuckers, let’s go.” After that, the entire album is like a roller-coaster exhilarating with ups and downs. There’s a lot of pop-punk power chords, and the drumming of Travis Barker is top-notch; he’s had a lot of practice being the only drummer anyone has collaborated with in the last year or so!

Talking of collaborations, the second song, ‘Bois Lie,’ features Machine Gun Kelly; love him, or hate him, the song is quite good. Close on that’s tracks heals is the lead single from the record ‘Bite Me,’ which comes crashing out of nowhere and tears things up.

But before listeners have a chance to take a breath, we’re back into another collaboration, this time with blackbear. It may seem like Lavigne is just rolling out all the “it crowd” for features as they’ve all been doing a heavy rotation in the scene collaboration-wise. Unfortunately, blackbear’s verse fails quite to hit the spot.

Within the 33 minutes of raucous fun music, Lavigne has presented us with other songs that stand out. For example, when Lavigne demands listeners ‘Kiss Me Like The World Is Ending’ or when she gets a bout of ‘Deja Vu’ but no song on this record beats her best collaboration yet.

As fans start to approach the end of the record, track 10, ‘All I Wanted’ features the one and only pop-punk legend Mark Hoppus from Blink-182. This is our all-time favorite moment on the album; the song has the couple singing their way through memories because all they “wanted was you.” It’s a hit in the making all two and a half minutes of it! 

The album starts how it finishes in beautiful circular style as Lavigne sings, “come on, mother fucker, let’s go.” This is definitely an album you can enjoy again and again with short but sweet songs and a feel-good factor.