The Offspring

With the hit "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)," Offspring move further from their Punk roots on their fifth album. The band dig deeper into other Los Angeles subcultures, coming up with Latin Pop, hip hop and Glam Rock-tinged songs. They don't abandon their roots completely though -- the foundation of all thirteen songs lies firmly in SoCal Punk.

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 he... More >

Four or five years late, they make selling out seem both easy! (unlike the major-label labor Ixnay on the Hombre) and fun! (unlike the fluke smash Smash). A dozen or two bpm faster than when they caught Green Day's punk wave, they sound like a Bad Religion whose catchy drone is at long last unencumbered by any message deeper than "The truth about the world is that crime does pay"--which, to their credit, makes them indignant--or, more generally, that "The Kids Aren't Alright." This truth they explore as fully as--but, as is only fitting given their relatively privileged upbringing, less solemnly than--any gangsta. Only on the title track do they get grandiose. And while keeping it light keeps them on the right side of their frat-boy base, it also makes the f*ckups they mock and mourn seem all the more hurtful. (Grade - A-)