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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 9, 2004)
Oft-duplicated formula wrecks latest Offspring ‘Splinter’ offers the same sounds from previous Offspring albums despite attempted style changes By Ryan Nyburg Senior Pulse Reporter Punk rock, as a musical form, is rather limited. After 25 years of lock step beats, minimalist chord pro gressions and endlessly aggressive vocals, it has come to the point that if a punk band is not consistendy in R IEVIE W their music. -- The Off ed out being just a tad more creative than the glut of pop-punk bands that infected radio in the late 1990s. Quick, catchy tunes with funny lyrics have been a punk mainstay since the Ramones, and the Off spring made it their own by adding a healthy ska influence to the equa tion. But after a couple multi-plat inum selling albums, the band seemed to pick a format and settle with it. 1998's "Americana" album was an uneven mix of catchy, radio friendly pop and angst-ridden dirges about emotional pain. "Conspiracy of One," released in 2000, offered more of the same, and now last month's "Splinter" brings it all back again, merely copying the same old riffs and the same old ideas. While repeating yourself is hardly a sin in the music biz, prob lems do arise when each copy just becomes a paler version of the origi nal. "Splinter" is about as pale as it gets, bringing hardly anything new to the mix. The opening track, "Neocon," sets the tone for the rest of the album. A minute and a half of vague state ments that never add up to a pur pose, the song finishes before it ever really begins. The rest of the album runs at about the same level. What isn't anthemic angst-parades is hu morless frat rock like "The Worst Hangover Ever" (which isn't as fun ny as it sounds). The band is at its most pathetic when it makes at tempts at street cred, such as "Da ventive then there is no reason to care about spring start Hui," an ode to a Hawaiian surf brotherhood. The song falls flat, not even meeting punk's low standards of originality. To their credit, the band does at tempt some stylistic changes, such as the mostly acoustic "Spare Me the Details." But the problem with acoustic music is that more focus is put on the lyrics and in this case the band finds itself once again lacking. Despite the sub-Steve Miller rhyming schemes ("time" and "mind," "eyes" and "knife"), the story of a guy whose girlfriend cheats on him lacks both a point and a purpose, and the whole thing seems like an attempt to recreate their own damaged relationship classic "Self Esteem." Probably the only worthwhile song on the album is also the first single, the ultra catchy "Hit That." With its simplistic Devo-style syn thesizer riff, it shows the band tak ing a few steps in a different direc tion. But the next track, "Race Against Myself," jettisons any hope that the Offspring will again be come interesting. That song is merely indicative of the problems on so many of the songs on "Splin ter." The lyrics run through all the usual depressing cliches, "I've had all I can stand," etc. But the angst is never directed at anything in partic ular and singer Dexter Holland seems to be depressed for no rea son. That doesn't require a song, it requires Prozac. There has long been talk, mostly among punk rock purists, who tend to be the worst sort of musical fas cists anyway, that the Offspring have sold out and have begun pan dering to the market. It's difficult to say if this is really true, since the band did some of their most inven tive work while still selling mil lions. They've always been a pop band at the core. But the difference now is that each song feels ready for a demographic, and though the band has grown up, their music is still attempting to work for the same age group. Now it has stopped feeling honest and one day people will stop listening. 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