It’s doubtful that many of us who were bouncing around provincial rock clubs to Come Out And Play in the mid-90s would honestly have expected The Offspring to still be spreading their brand of sunshine three decades later. Surely something so effervescent was bound to burst sooner rather than later.
Yet here we are, as they release their eleventh album, and they are just as pumped up with relentlessly positive energy as ever, even – as on old-school thrasher Light It Up – when they’re singing about being pissed off and ready for a ruck.
That pounding, polished punk they’ve made their calling card intermingles with loveable, loved-up, 50s delinquency pop-influenced nuggets of joy and absolutely shameless festival-pleasing chants (Come To Brazil tops out on a shit-eating, participation-demanding ‘Ole, ole, ole, ole’).
There are no new tricks, but there’s plenty of life in these old dogs yet.
