Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I really was surprised.  Honestly.  I found out the Offspring had a new album, and I was curious.  Memories of ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’, ‘Want You Bad’, ‘Why Don’t You Get A Job’ and, who could ever forget “Pretty Fly For a White Guy’ came flooding back.  So I wanted to see what the band has been up to since the Americana-era.  And, as I said, I was rather pleasantly surprised. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, they still sound distinctly Offspring, instrumentally and certainly vocally.  But they have grown up a lot, and they’ve certainly been listening to what’s been going on in the music world and infusing it in a way that’s distinctly their own.  Fix You, the tenth track, reminds me somewhat of Buckcherry’s “Sorry”, though falling short of an actual apology.  It acknowledges in a rather well-worded way that the problems in a relationship are never really as one-sided as they may seem:  “Then she says, baby/I’ve gotta get going/Cutting each other/Without even knowing”.  And I think it’s the acknowledgement of how such simple, underrated actions and words can entirely upend a situation that makes this song work so well for me. 

A couple other songs that really stuck out to me upon the first (and third ..and fifth…and –you get it) listen, happened to be the first and third tracks: Half-Truism and You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid.  Half-Truism sets it’s hooks in you fairly subtly.  It took me half the workday one Monday to realize I had the chorus stuck in my head.  (In my defense, I was tapping my foot because I decided singing the tune in my head would be a little to ..awkward, for the workplace).  And You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid kicks you in the teeth from the first line: ‘Show me how to lie/You’re getting better all the time’.  It’s the shock factor I remember from Americana in some ways, lyrically or in their music videos, but in a much subtler-worded way.  Which makes it even better. 

Hammerhead, the fourth track, is the song you may or may not have been hearing on the radio.  I know I heard it the other day in the car and over the weekend at the pub.  It’s from the perspective of a soldier at war, though by the end of the song, you can hear in the lyrics something in said soldier’s head has gone very, very wrong.  From fighting the enemy with guns to shooting up a school in the country he’s fighting in.  And while it’s certainly not my pick for a single, I can understand why it was chosen: it fits comfortably with a lot of the social and political issues of the times, and the album itself has a war/chaos theme about it’s design (and the songs on the album themselves all seem to have a struggle inherent in the meaning, whether it be in terms of self, society, the larger world, or relationships). 

So give this album a try.  This is not your older brother’s Offspring.  Or even the Offspring you used to listen to.  This is a band grown up, into itself and expanded beyond the genre you remember them fitting so snugly into.