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Music

The Offspring - 'Days Go By'

Featuring a song that even Katy Perry would reject as "a bit too dumb" and "a bit too much about California."

THE OFFSPRING
Days Go By

Columbia, 2012

  • Favorites:

    "Days Go By"

  • FLAVORS:

    Peroxide, expired Kraft American cheese

RATING:

TRACK LIST:

  • The Future Is Now
  • Secrets From The Underground
  • Days Go By
  • Turning Into You
  • Hurting As One
  • Cruising California (Bumpin' In My Trunk)
  • All I Have Left Is You
  • OC Guns
  • Dirty Magic
  • I Wanna Secret Family (With You)
  • Dividing By Zero
  • Slim Pickens Does The Right Thing And Rides The Bomb To Hell

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PROS

—Judging from these promo shots, Dexter and Noodles have both been using the same extra-strength teeth bleaching agent. Next to each other, all those peroxide whites and solarium oranges mean they could easily be mistaken for the flag of the Orange Free State.
—Contains a re-recording of an early Ignition-era track called "Dirty Magic," which, with its wailed minor key melody and H8-my-dad sentiment, reminds you of how they were initially presented to the world: as a sort of populist 1994 methadone to grunge's smack.
—They remain the thinking man's Sum 41.
—Dexter Holland was once a Ph.D candidate in molecular biology.
—Noodles's real name is Kevin Wasserman.

CONS

—There is a song on here that even Katy Perry would probably reject as "a bit too dumb," and "a bit too much about California." That song is forthcoming single "Cruising California (Bumpin In My Trunk)." Worse yet: it is quite catchy and could easily be a hit.
—While listening to this, I have written in my notes “It's just a lot of chug-chug 'dance-fucker-dance.'” I have no idea why I wrote this. Or what it means. Make of it what you will.

VERDICT

Depending on how old you are, the Offspring are either a) a joke band, b) a band who could have been good but became a joke band when they sold out to do "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)," or c) a band who could have been good but became a joke band when they sold out to do Smash. With everything from ratty Epitaph-era punk to the sort of nonnying pop-punk that would shame Avril Lavigne, this is a record to please each of those constituencies and none. They've kept their eye for a hook sharper than most acts of their age, and this is maybe pleasantly above-par for a ninth record. But when you get to your ninth, it's hard to know what to hope for. Read this, take what polite nostalgia you can from it, and content yourself with basic reassurance of their continued existence.