Rancid

Rancid
Let the Dominoes Fall
(Epitaph, 2009)

No longer junkie men telling us what their story is, having proven last time around that they’re Indestructible, what does Tim Armstrong have left to say to us? “The bravest kids I know,” he sings, “are the ones that got a goal.” Six years after you thought Indestructible’s we-stick-together sloganeering was saccharine, here comes a punk rock stay-in-school message.

Call Let the Dominoes Fall many things: Rancid’s “fat and happy record,” their “beat the odds triumph,” their “Young Jeezy-cum-Barack Obama Yes We Can record,” or, most damning of all, “not punk, boring, mature record.” The mohawked vets will slap you upside the head probably. Not only do they know their moment (…And Out Come the Wolves) is more than 10 years behind them, but so is their first mature record—the near-masterpiece Life Won’t Wait, a brutal, Jamaican-style portrayal of the war between the social classes of punks and rude boys.

What’s left is a road-warriors-for-life record, slower than anything they’ve ever done—with some acoustic and harmonica even—but still up-tempo, if not at a breakneck speed. The bigger surprise is that it’s their catchiest since …And Out Come the Wolves. Even if the tunes are as thin as the hair on their heads and the quartet will never again arrange as subtly and powerfully as they did in Kingston for Life Won’t Wait, they’re all there, as hummable as your favorite They Might Be Giants record.

As with Wolves, the first half of Let the Dominoes Fall is the best, with barrel-along titles like “East Bay Night”, “Up to No Good”, and “Last One to Die”, all of them making for ebullient choruses and obvious chord progressions. The sneaky bass noodling of Life Won’t Wait has been re-reduced to the thudding drone of their earlier records; “This Place” is hardcore of the Let’s Go sort, not 2000’s deliberate scrape-the-walls blitzkrieg Rancid. “Up to No Good” is exceptionally catchy, pump-organ ska à la 1998’s “Hooligans” with an irresistibly hiccup-y feel. And the single, “Last One to Die”, could be “Lock, Step & Gone” screwed-and-chopped, slower, and more deliberately anthemic. It will please their aging fanbase, even as the kids reluctantly sing along. And unlike Green Day’s uninspired new 21st Century Breakdown, which swipes from AC/DC among others, Rancid’s ripping themselves off from their own comfort zone, not fighting their songwriter’s block crisis by nervously invading other people’s.

The slower, more tedious tunes like “The Highway” are pretty tolerable considering the band’s gift for nursery-rhyme melody at any tempo. But the biggest disappointment on this pretty-good comeback is Armstrong’s horribly damaged voice, which was never quite honey to begin with, but now flirts with Tom Waits-in-patois territory, or a David Johansen borrowing Marlon Brando’s huge wad of gum. At least he sounds genuine and lived-in—lots of no-sleep and million-miles lyrics here, not to mention one New Orleans girl with a “smile like a newborn child” and their not-unlike-Green Day’s-but-far-more-concise warning for the working class to wake up. “Wake me up to reality,” in fact—which I’m almost positive will be before September ends.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Tags: Rancid, Let the Dominoes Fall, Epitaph Records