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Exclusive Review from Rolling Stone
Though they were raised in the cradle of Orange County, California, punk, the Offspring are more about songs than attitude. This quartet's sound has as much to do with the crazed, anything-goes novelty of Nuggets-era garage rock from the Sixties as it does with the loud-fast skateboard anthems of the last decade. Half of Americana, the band's fifth album, salutes mid-Eighties hardcore, and it's a record that any TSOL fan has already heard a million times: pogo-pony polka beats; bass lines that fly on a carpet of eighth notes; zooming, solo-free guitar riffs; and lots of "whoah-ohhh!" sing-along parts. Frontman Dexter Holland rants on about "fragile lives, shattered dreams" on "The Kids Aren't Alright" and, on another track, offers this SoCal extreme-sports manifesto: "Faster now, you know I got no brakes." There's no sense of risk, though -- even the hyperventilating remake of Morris Albert's pathetic "Feelings" is predictably snide.
But the other half of Americana flips purists the bird. The Offspring toss processed percussion and wordless surf-ballad harmonies into their bag of hooks on "She's Got Issues," while "Pay the Man" is a three-part, eight-minute opus with a pronounced Middle Eastern vibe. With steel drum and sleigh bells, "Why Don't You Get a Job?" echoes the insidious singsongy charm of both the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia." And "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" is the goofball, Latin-loco-rock successor to the band's catchy-as-hell 1994 single "Come Out and Play"; the new track is even reprised as a mariachi instrumental. This may not be fuel for the punk lifers in the mosh pit, but those who value pop for its gleeful window-smashing novelty will find something to crank up.
Exclusive Review
The Offspring's brand of punk rock is as American as cheese-burgers and as reliable as Old Faithful, so calling its new album Americana is both funny (it's hardly "Americana" in the radio programming sense of the word) and strangely true (punk is actually the "roots" music of the late 20th century, is it not?). In line with the patriotically-titled album, the band has gotten back to the core of its constituency. The songs on Americana are classic Offspring, not just because they're marked by thick guitar chords and the familiar tone of Dexter Holland's voice, but also because they're packed with the cheeky humor that made the band's breakthrough, Smash, such a hit. The first single, "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)," is loaded with smart-aleck jabs at suburban gangstas, and other cuts like "She's Got Issues" feature enough clever couplets to keep adolescent skater miscreants entertained for months. Most important of all, though, Americana proves that "career bands" really do exist in the brutally fast-paced music industry - you just have to give the people what they want.