Rancid’s new album Trouble Maker is here with us. But having formed nearly three decades ago, will we have gone off them?
Rancid, alongside Green Day and The Offspring are widely credited with the 90’s punk music scene revival. Having remained with the same independent record label, Hellcat, for their 26 year career and barely changing line-ups in that time, the band can hardly be accused of selling out, despite making both gold and platinum certified albums. But following the less favourable reviews of their more recent works, just how does Trouble Maker hold up?
Track Fast is the opening track of the album. It’s shouty, chaotic, and less than one minute long. The song is all power chords and repeated lyrics including “it’s all too fast!”. For lovers of punk, this could be the perfect tone to set you up for the rest of the album, or a warning to not go through the next 18 tracks.
Ghost Of A Chance tails on immediately after. It’s full of growling vocals, wailing guitars and is very well-produced (despite all the distortion that seems to try and hide this fact). Molly Make Up Your Mind, Make It Out Alive and Cold Cold Blood, amongst others, follow in much the same vein as this. The danger of creating so many songs below the two minute mark is that they will potentially start sounding similar to one another. This may be the case here and many of the songs may not stand out in their own way. However, it bears recognising that despite this reviewer physically sitting down and listening to the album track by track, this is not the intended environment. Rancid are best seen live, or alternatively, played very loud in a living room whilst headbanging around the room jumping on furniture (or at least that’s how I discovered them as a teenager).
Telegraph Avenue doesn’t allow the pace to drop for a moment. Its urgent, picked overdriven strings and a frenetic drum beat lead onto a strummed, light and shimmery guitar riff; all of this is underlying the raw and aggressive vocals with “na na na nas” taking up much of the chorus. The band still feels as primitive as they always have; claps in the breakdown, with untrained and uncontrolled vocals continue to show us why Rancid helped lead the punk revival in the USA. When paired up with tracks such as An Intimate Close Up Of A Street Punk Troublemaker, it’s hard to believe any other band from the era is capable of representing the punks of the 90’s.
Where I’m Going is a bit of a game-changer from the band’s usual offerings. A ska-dub lilt breaks us into this song with a much lighter set of verses with a synth breaking up the grating vocals and guitar. To really get an idea of what the song feels like, it’s worth considering what would happen if you tried to listen to The Offspring and Madness, only simultaneously. It’s a wicked throwback to Operation Ivy – the influential ska band that led Tim Armstrong and Matt Freedman to form Rancid in the first place. The final song, Go On Rise Up bears some similarity in terms of it’s more relaxed (for Rancid anyway) melody and vocals here and also shows the band are not just a one trick pony.
Buddy stands out as one of the very few tracks from the album which runs over three minutes. Despite sitting closer to the usual time marker of most modern music, this isn’t necessarily something that suits Rancid. It almost feels like they flag when trying to keep the same level of furious energy going for longer than normal. The guitar solo however, is as punk as they come. It feels cocky, angry and suits them perfectly.
Trouble Maker is the ninth studio album by the American punk rock band Rancid
All American Neighbourhood is another song with a potential issue. You immediately notice that the song is out of tune, although this is clearly a conscious choice, it doesn’t work that well. As true to their roots as they are, sometimes it’s not worth releasing something that is the length of, sounds like, and is edited like a jam session. That said, a later duo of songs, I Kept A Promise and This Is Not The End have much of the same discordant feel but comfortably recover from the issues of the former, even if it’s hard to place exactly why.
Bovver Rock And Roll is a surprise track on the album. The song feels like a tribute to early work by The Rolling Stones, piano backing up powerful guitars, growling bass and a set of vocals that wouldn’t be amiss with a peacocking Mick Jagger singing them; it is comfortably my favourite track on the album, even if just for the novelty.
Overall the album doesn’t stand out to critical listening, but that was never really the point. As an antibody to the easy listening deluge of chart music in summer, look no further than here.
Author: Steve, Southgate Store
