Album Review: Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace by The Offspring

Sadly, after their initial run of popularity during the pop-?punk explosion of the mid-?90s alongside bands like Green Day, the Offspring have done a dandy job of pigeonholing themselves as a kind of goofy frat house favourite because of asinine mega-?hits like Pretty Fly (For A White Guy). While that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of doing something more substantial, they might have to try a little harder to convince us. They’ve done that on Rise And Fall.

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It's not that the Offspring sound behind the times on their eighth album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace -- it's that they sound disconnected from it. They may rant about George W. Bush's America and all the crass consumerism accompanying it, but they don't seem to realize that Coldplay beat them to a power ballad called "Fix You" just three years ago, offering a different melody but the same sentiment carrying the same title (to make matters worse, another of the album's power ballads, "A Lot Like You," opens with a surge straight out of "Clocks").

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Review Summary: The lyrics are so patently ridiculous and lacking in perspective that they become all-consuming. There’s no real scientific evidence for it, but it’s been more or less proven that the more effort the Offspring put into forging a distinct sound, the lower the quality of Dexter Holland’s songwriting. Sure, there are anomalies- ‘Come Out And Play’ may prove to be the singularly most brilliant track the band have put out, and the sublime ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’ expertly skirts the infectious/irritating divide- but in general the Orange County punks fare best when they’re marrying Noodles’ infectious, brazen riffs with Holland’s sincere-but-fairly-meaningless political slogans.

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