ME. Is the Band Mark O’Connell and Eddie Reyes Built After Nearly a Decade of Silence

ME. stands for Mark and Eddie: drummer Mark O’Connell and guitarist Eddie Reyes, both formerly of Taking Back Sunday, who spent close to a decade in no contact with each other. Their manager eventually sat them down for a first real conversation. That conversation, and the slow untangling of years of misunderstanding, became the basis of songs.

The ten instrumentals O’Connell and Reyes wrote were rough and unresolved, built to hold a voice that had not arrived yet. It came from Chicago musician Mike Jansen, whose lyrics happened to describe terrain the two founders already knew. Neal Amiruddin, a longtime friend of O’Connell’s, plays bass. The result is ME.’s debut, All Good Things (2026).

The record is loud, direct guitar rock with roots in 1990s and early-2000s punk. Jansen’s writing carries the confessional weight: “Bloodsport” and “Sun Poison” turn on not being able to change, or on losing the ability to see color. O’Connell has been candid that there were stretches when neither man was sure the band would survive the process. It did.

What makes All Good Things worth attention is not the reunion as a story. It is that the album treats reconciliation as labor rather than resolution, and that four people with no obvious reason to make a record together did it anyway.