Pop Drunk Snot Bread is a Pop Punk Fun Shred of a Kick Ass Out Bed album from Texas’ own Bowling For Soup.
Jaret Reddick & Co take on some heavy, heavy issues, in their familiarly smartass/dumbass, self-deprecating, satirical, sharply-worded rockin’ style. And that includes the age-old concern of advancing years, laughing at longevity, the rigid formalities and banal normalities of their very own mortality, especially on Wouldn’t Change A Thing, the anthemic After All These Beers and the already classic Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It).
This is an album about real life, and it’s all there – school, revolution, Uber, Bud, late for work, date night, dog poo, scrolling, hanging around, sunshine, the neighbourhood, tattoos, cartoons, remakes, tears, laughter, drunken fight, shining stars, tour bus, wrestling boots, downward spiral, kicked and screamed, money, beers, stand-up, television, religion, Green Day, caught with pot, Genius Bar, sitcom, ER.
I Wanna Be Brad Pitt does everything it says on the box (What’s in the box?!): “Criticised for his accent in Snatch and then/ He won an Oscar for beating up Bruce Lee … In the tabloids with Jennifer Aniston/ and then/ Blah blah blah blah Angelina Jolie.”
After Mr Pitt (his ol’ pal George Clooney pops up later), another iconic star goes under the microscope in the paean to WWE wrestler Alexa Bliss, with its Metal-y riffs and adoring: “I love to watch her in the ring/ To me she’s the champ of everything.” A love song titled after Country Queen and icon June Carter Cash (and subtitled Lost And Found) opens, quite naturally, with an Eddie Van Halen-esque geetar intro and involves much red wine and subsequent throwing up. Killin’ ’Em With Kindness tackles the negative aspects of social media and threatens to get serious before breaking down into a “Parental Advisory” chorus.
Any individual songs I haven’t mentioned are about as good as the others, if not always recognisably different from them. There are 15 tracks but only one is more than four minutes (“life’s too short to be long-winded”, after all). Bowling For Soup Pee Break and Public Service Announcement aren’t songs at all and the 15th bit is a brief reprise of the opener, Greatest Of All Time – which the guys probably are, let’s face it, at least when it comes to being Bowling For Soup.
This is their 11th studio album, and BFS have been doing this or something very like it since the mid-90s. Musical trends and cycles come and go – it’s hard to keep a grip on all the stuff that’s out there now, let’s face it – but, in my book, when there’s no room on Earth or in its atmosphere for this kind of guitar-based, beer chugging, party Power Pop, it really is time to burn out or fade away. Or, on a brighter note, as Jaret and the boys might convince you: “Staying young isn’t as easy as it could be/ I’ve put on a few pounds, but I still love being me.”
Pop Drunk Snot Bread is out on April 22 via Brando Records/Que-So Records