Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace [Explicit]

Soooo Offspring! By now, most bands would have broken up, started writing sickening love songs, or had an unfortunate suicide but this is one of the few bands that stays true to its roots.

Other reviews were on the money, none of the tracks have me pressing the >> button and that classification falls to less than 1% of the stuff in my music collection.

Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace is a very good effort put forth by The Offspring. It was a long wait since Splinter and the new album came not a moment too soon, especially with the current vast wasteland that is the music frontier. In my opinion, the best songs are Nothingtown, Hammerhead, and Your're Gonna Go Far, Kid. I replay these songs over and over when they come up on my IPOD. Also, for a change, I think that the slower songs work well. I like Fix You and A Lot Like Me quite a bit. For my tastes, the only song that does not work is Stuff Is Messed Up. With a hit ratio of 12/13, I rate this album very high! Thanks for a great job to Dexter and the guys!!

Pretty good cd. My fav songs are Hammerhead and You're Gonna Go Far Kid. Not something that can be listened to over and over but for something to listen to every now and then its good.

**** (Amazon locked my accidental 5 star rating).

I feel the need when discussing a band like the Offspring to state my age. There seems to be two kinds of fans who remain standing today; those who were old enough to know Smash and Ixnay (and possibly Ignition) when they were actually released, and those who were young and enjoyed the novelty of "Pretty Fly for a White Guy". I have to say that Americana was the last album that was universally loved by both groups of these fans. As a 26 year old, I fit into the first. Which is why I listened through "Conspiracy" once and only know that "Hit That" was a lame song on an album called "Splinter". The Offspring had been one of my favorite bands in the world, but that was 10 years ago. So it was with some reluctance that I downloaded "Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace" a couple of months ago. I have to say, that I was immediately hooked, just like the old days. "Half-Truism" has become one of my favorite Offspring songs ever, and "Trust in You" could have very well been on "Ixnay on the Hombre". "You're Gonna Go Far Kid" is pretty annoying to me and should not have been a single in my opinion, but "Hammerhead" works really well. The next couple of songs are strong, and then comes "Kristy Are You Doing Okay?", which initially had me rolling my eyes. Then I just skipped it. Then I let it play. Then I put in on while not listening to the album and now it makes my mix cd's and play lists. I don't know how, but it truly grew on me and is one of my favorite songs. As for the rest of the album, it rocks. I think either one of these groups of fans that I described would love this record and I'm glad I gave it a chance. You should too.

Telling people I really like the Offspring isn't something that's easy to do. They have a very solid discography but starting with 1998's Americana it became peppered and eventually nearly saturated with guilty pleasures. There's not really song on 2003's Splinter that you can admit to loving without getting stripped of all "punk credentials". It was something I didn't mind, since I'm the kind of guy who's used to defending his musical taste. But when Hammerhead was released as the first single from the first proper studio effort from the Offspring in five years, something was magical about it. It was lengthy, yes, and a little pretentious in how it was drawn out, but it was a positively rockin' song. It had the adrenaline-pumping riffs, the smart lyrics and the trademark Offspring hook to give me the satisfaction of listening to any of their finest songs without having to worry about how I'm going to defend the record when talking with my music snob compatriots. For once, I was going to buy an Offspring album, crank it up, sing along with the irresistable choruses while the critics and fans backed me up on my emotions 100%, right? Right?

I would be right, if the critics weren't heartless bastards. I won't pretend there's nothing to critique here, but the resounding critical consensus is that the Offspring are "punk veterans" who should "know better" than to have a simple thesis for their album such as "[stuff] is [messed] up", before going on about what a splendid record Smash was. And I'm not denying Smash was indeed a fantastic album, but they're clearly tinting their shades a bit rose. Dexter Holland's lyrics were never anything like Bad Religion's polysyllabic political musings or NOFX's aggressive blasts against anything establishment. Dexter's lyrics are, and always have been, social in their context. "I'm not the one who made the world what it is today / I'm not the one who caused the problems started long ago" is not far removed at all from "I don't know too much / but I know this: [stuff] is [messed] up!" It's always been the same in that the songs are less about the government's specific wrongdoings and more so about ubiquitous attitudes and vices that, since they run rampant through our government, work as political songs, but apply to your boss, your friend, your significant other, your parents, etc. as well as they do the president. There's nothing condescending, preachy or all-knowing about it. More than can be said about tracks like Holiday, which I suppose these critics are using as their golden example to judge all punk albums hereafter to, but it simply boils down to "War sucks, screw Bush" with little more than artistic inflection elevating it to three minutes in length. Punk started out of aggression towards politicians, and now the credentials required to make a punk album is to practically be one? If Dexter Holland was valedictorian in high school and claims to not know too much, and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong was a stoner high school dropout who is now claiming to be qualified to know how to fix our country's problems, someone is clearly padding their résumé.

That's not to say that Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace is the album I hoped for. The guilt abounds whether it's the kind of guilt one gets from listening to My Chemical Romance on the album's bleeding-heart opening anthem Half-Truism, ("If we don't make it alive / It's a hell of a good day to die"? Really?) the guilt one gets from any of their genre-niche novelty songs in the dance-rock "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (which nails the pleasure center of your brain in ways Fall Out Boy's Dance, Dance only claimed to do), and the ballads. OK, chill out, there's only two of them. There's Kristy, Are You Doing OK, which despite the noble subject matter (Dex tries to make peace with letting his childhood friend's domestic abuse go unreported) chokes when Bob Rock assembles the song by the All-American Rejects playbook, except he skipped the page that says "have a breakdown or key change to keep the song from being skip-button-abusively monotonous by the last chorus". Fix You, however, has nothing to do with its Coldplay-borne namesake and resembles more a less-mechanical Chasing Cars. There's no abundance of major-key radio-ready monsters here, unlike the four albums that came before it here, though. In their place, though, are three very good up-tempo songs that sound bright and jovial without ceasing to sound like the punky Offspring that filled out the rest of the album.

I give the Offspring a hard time. And maybe I'm not so different from the critics I spent half this review blasting in that I feel the boys are capable of more than they've put forth on this album. But truthfully, there's been something missing in the five years they took off, and a summer drive with a new bangin' Offspring song on my car stereo is a pleasure I haven't indulged in for a good long while. Even if I don't have the balls to listen with the windows down. Bottom line, if you like classic rough punk Offspring but also have a soft spot in your heart for slick, hooky poppy Offspring, this record doesn't just mash the two concepts together, but satisfies both concepts in one of the most well-rounded, coherent albums the O.C. band has put together in a long time. It's a shame the critics don't share my enthusiasm. [Stuff] is [messed] up indeed.