These are albums that my twenty-something self would have adored, and my forty-something self still enjoys. Pop-punk seems to back in fashion after a long hiatus in quality.
PUP's album is really good Weezer-ish/HC/punk.
http://noisey.vice.com/blog/pups-debut-album-is-a-perfect-ten
Cayetana's pop/punk album is streaming now, and IMO, is really good pop-punk.
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2014/09/stream_cayetana.html
Also, The Coathangers "Suck My Shirt" features songs that are always too long (a complaint raised by an astute Pitchfork reviewer) but their album is pretty good, too. Here's a sample...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu6wUrCNYlQ
There's still a lot of dreck out there (see above-mentioned "Say Anything"), but Masked Intruder is really strong.
I wouldn't doubt that there's a lot of bad stuff out there. The best pop-punk was always rooted in weird alt/punk enclaves where bands that had started with their feet in 80's HC/punk turned melodic and started writing pop songs. It turned real sour after about '97, when every band was trying to imitate Screeching Weasel leads and Ramones riffs without a sure footing or confidence in what they were doing. It didn't help that a lot of the bands doing it in the late nineties and the aughts didn't have both the built-up credibility and searing contrarianism of the Queers and other authentic punk bands that were doing melodic stuff -- bands who weren't just doing it as just a Ramones-worship thing, but also as part of a movement that involved a thumbing of the nose at the orthodoxy of the leftist punk scenes at the time (The Queers being photographed at the Purple Onion for one of their albums instead of at Gilman Street was one of those decisions, as were many others by the bands of that time, and both pop-punk and garage-influenced bands were sort of rebelling against what, IMO, was a nineties leftist orthodoxy that found its outlet mainly in alternative scenes during that period. Pop-punk, garage, psychobilly, etc., had had enough and was, while never conservative, at least rebelling against orthodoxy).
The "Say Anything" fiasco was tough to read (I checked your link out). I don't think Marah Eakin -- the AV Club writer -- is correct on the time frame of when that song was written, and I'd always assumed (back in '93 or so) what the guy from Say Anything did. I guess you can't Kill Yr Idols anymore or some nostalgia-drenched journalist is going to contradict Nirvana's own biographer and then pass it off as fact. Too bad the guy didn't have a computer in front of him for a quick Wiki search. I still wouldn't listen to that band, regardless. Pop-punk has had, as you say, a lot of dreck over the past fifteen years. I'm just pointing out some bands that seem to have used some nineties alt influences mixed with their punkish tunes to create a slightly different and listenable vibe.
I'll have to check out Masked Intruder.
And The Muffs returned with a pretty well-received album, Whoop De Doo, out on Burger records. Cool things afoot for the pop punkers, girl group aficionados, and garage rockers these days.
Take that how you will.
