Well, they certainly do. Project, that is. This is some solid, strident three-piece pop-punk, the kind that bred widely in basement clubs throughout the ‘90s and ‘00s. Not a dime a dozen anymore, but the same standards still apply—how slick are they willing to go? By the sound of this album, about 50 percent. There’s a live/whatever feel, but a sense of propriety in how précises the beats are and when the guitar solos come in. Even the guitar swoops and fills seem overly planned, or just obvious.

Clearly, I overthink this stuff myself. These are songs kids today could use, about living through uncertainty and despair in the times before, as the zeitgeist has it, “it gets better.”

The Projection also title a lot of songs so they seem like show tunes or standards or greeting cards: “Not a Day Goes By” (no relation to the Sondheim tune from Merrily We Roll Along), “Just Be Yourself,” the contrary punch of “Always Remember” and “Trying to Forget,” and the decidedly non-Elton John “Your Song,” It’s about the song’s narrator coming to terms with his own feelings, not some awkward communication between actual communicating lovers. There’s a lonely voice throughout a lot of these songs, a guy dreaming and clarifying at the same time. “I wish that we were rock stars,” is one plaint. “Why can’t we be rock stars?”