Bouncing Souls

The Gold Record

(Epitaph / Ada)

Record Review by Daniel Brody

The Bouncing Souls, like any good punk band, have pretty much made the same album since their first EP back in 1993—three-chord anthems with Greg Attonito’s bellowing vocals about reliving the best times of youth, girls with nice eyes and smiles, good friends, and remaining true to your ideals. It’s pretty gooey and sentimental stuff, and it certainly helps if you spent high school trying pluck out their songs on guitar or listening to them on headphones walking aimlessly around the suburban wasteland where you grew up. Otherwise, The Gold Record is punk rock’s equivalent of a Full House episode.

But, hey, between all your poisonous memories of high school, it’s nice to remember some pretty sweet times, and Bouncing Souls are the band equipped to make that happen. And on The Gold Record, between all the usual soccer stadium choruses and friends-to-the-end messages, there’s even some evidence that the Bouncing Souls are advancing a bit musically and lyrically. “The Messenger” has some rockin’ harmonica soloing, and “The Pizza Song” has acoustic guitars, horns and an accordion! It’s still a big, boisterous, hooky number about the unsung guy who makes the pizza during our lunch break; of course, he has a girl in his life who went away and isn’t coming back. But on “Letter From Iraq,” they adapt a poem written by a soldier overseas and come up with a sucker punch of an anti-war song. It’s almost as if they transposed the humanity in their songs about suburban dicking around and made a tune just as deeply felt about war—one that tries to recreate what terrified soldiers and Iraqi civilians are actually going through.

Elsewhere, there are enough Whoa-oa-oas on The Gold Record to keep lifer fans locked in. If you like your rock and roll full of fist-pumping adrenaline and honest-to-a-fault emotional revelations, then you just might have a new favorite band. If you’re too cool and jaded for all that, then by all means stay the hell away.