The Band CAMINO Find Beauty in the In-Between on 'NeverAlways (Vol. 2)': Album Review
- Abby Anderson
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Stand-out tracks: "Holly!" "Do What You Gotta Do" "12:34"
Our favorites: "Mascara" "Never and Always" "What's Always Been"
Release date: May 22, 2026
For fans of: The Wrecks, The Maine, Jonas Brothers
They hit the mainstream with their debut, self-titled album. They've been independent, they've been signed to labels, they've been indie rock, they've been electropop. The Band CAMINO are ever-shifting in their venture from college garage rock band to one of the most successful new bands of the last decade. Comprised of Jeffrey Jordan (vocals, guitar), Spencer Stewart (vocals, guitar), and Garrison Burgess (drums, bass), The Band CAMINO could have satisfied their growing army of fans with just one album release in the last year with last summer's NeverAlways. But why stop there? Announced a month prior to its release, the band's latest studio project NeverAlways (Vol. 2), released May 22 via Atlantic Records, hits the band's sweet spot, right between glistening rock and stoic acoustic-pop.
More than anything, NeverAlways (Vol. 2) feels like a culmination of every version of The Band CAMINO that has existed so far. The emotional urgency of their earlier work, the polished hooks of their major-label years, and the sleek pop tendencies they have experimented with all blend together into a project that sounds fully realized. Built around themes of contradiction and impermanence, the album thrives in emotional in-between spaces.
Album opener "Holly!" is everything there is to love about The Band CAMINO, about a summer pop-rock record. A rich electric guitar riff, a storyline that yearns, and a beat that just sounds like it would drive the crowd during a summer sunset amphitheater set to start jumping and never stop. A daring move to start with arguably the best song on the album, the risk is worth the pay off when that key change to die for hits.
As a full project NeverAlways (Vol. 2) revolves around the beauty in impermanence, and "Mascara" is a retroactive reflection on the pieces of relationships that remain more permanent than we'd like in hindsight. Staying in a dreamy pop-rock aura of reflection, "Afterthought" plays on its understatedly crisp rhythm production to bring a contradictory feeling of joy to its lyrical content of romantic disregard before that same concept turns toward the pop side of their sonic on "Do What You Gotta Do."
The middle of the project pulls back on some of its rock bravado as the band leans on slower tempo "Another Body" and effervescent, acoustic "Talk Cheap, Die Broke," allowing the emotional core of the album room to breathe. The back half of the album carries that self-deprecative effervescence and turns the heat back up into fuller-bodied pop-rock. "12:34" has been standing alone as a single in The Band CAMINO's discography nearly since the first NeverAlways project was released last summer, and it finally finds its home in a body of work. A playful bit of wordplay on the concept of wishing on 12:34 after missing the infamous 11:11 wish, this is where The Band CAMINO thrives; lighthearted yet dejected, sonically vivacious yet lyrically nonchalant.
With two projects following the concept of NeverAlways, that concept finally comes to fruition on "Never and Always." A pop-rock ballad, the culmination of that contradictory feeling of desiring a cyclical beginning and end, lands in the chorus's punchline: "I need never again and always." And closing out the album on the softest possible note, "What's Always Been" feels like a farewell to the in-between. Jordan and Stewart's voices intertwine over dreamy acoustics as this era for The Band CAMINO drifts away like a memory, ending the project with a sense of unresolved optimism. Fittingly, NeverAlways (Vol. 2) finds beauty in contradiction, a fitting evolution for a band that has spent its entire career embracing change.
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