Album Review: Days Go By

B

The Offspring, that pop punk sounding band from the 1990’s who played Pretty Fly (for a White Guy), have returned with their ninth studio album, Days Go By. If you’re a diehard fan of The Offspring then this album will already be in your collection; if not – approach it, but have a bit of caution. The album gives nothing new from The Offspring and you feel like you’ve heard it all before, but may still find yourself foot tapping along subconsciously because it’s such a catchy sound.

The Offspring kicked off their Days Go By campaign with an all partying, all hanging out with babes on the beach song Cruising California (Bumpin' in My Trunk). The song is pretty much summed up in the title there – it’s a fun song for The Offspring to bring out first and I don’t dislike it, but after eight albums I feel  The Offspring can do a bit better. On the flipside, the second single Days Go By becomes a bit more personal with lyrics: doesn’t matter in the end / those days go by / and we all start again. It’s still as carefree as The Offspring always are, but in a more warm fuzzy uplifting kind of way and it rescues an otherwise quite plain album.

When I listened to the rest of the songs of the album I didn’t feel like there was much variation between the songs. The best way to describe it is if you’ve got it on in the background, you might not even notice a change in song apart from that bit of silence between the tracks. I could say The Future is Now and Hurting as One are good songs – because they are – but I might as well say Spare Me The Details and Self Esteem (both released in the mid-2000’s) are good songs because it’s all the same old stuff which we already have in our iTunes library.

An interesting decision made on Days Go By was to include of a re-record of Dirty Magic, a song originally on The Offspring’s 1992 album Ignition. It’s a good song, and I like that it gives the album a different sound, but I don’t quite understand the motives. Are The Offspring trying to take a step backwards despite the rest of the album sounding modern? Are they trying to hold onto the fragments of the 1990’s when they were the most fly band around? Or do they simply love that song so much they wanted to include it?

Technically, Days Go By is all there – guitars are good, drums are good, vocals are good, songs sound fine. However, it all sounds so dated and, dare I say it, safe. The Offspring are that rebellious band who doesn’t care what society thinks, so why they didn’t put out an album which pushes the boundaries a bit more is beyond me.