Rancid

More raspy-voiced anthems made for and by punk rock misfits. Rancid's sixth album is a blend of rally-rousing old-school punk as sung by drunken pirates. The group sound poppier than ever on songs like "Stand Your Ground," but for the most part this is all power chords, Mohicans and sputtering energy.

Six albums into their career, Rancid are still incurable Clash zealots; it takes them little
more than a minute into Indestructible to name-check the late Joe Strummer. These Bay
Area punk stalwarts took their snaggle-toothed oi! boogie to the extreme on their last disc,
2000's one-dimensional Rancid. But Indestructible sweetens their spit-and-vinegar cocktails
with a spritz of melody: a little bit of soul organ in "Fall Back Down"; blissed-out b... More >

The Clash invented punk politics, and got pretty complex about them. Rancid ran with punk politics, which in Berkeley were burned into the subculture as deep as the three-chord forcebeat. Their big ideas and deep convictions are about their scene, not their society, and they devote their warmest album ever to celebrating and justifying that scene, which they rightly see as global. Sure it would be nice if they put their all into offing Bush, but it would also be nice if the Democrats did. Instead, Rancid offer an inside look at a ready-made dissident voting bloc, toggling back and forth from defeated to defiant as they pursue their little happinesses. Wesley Clark is so smart I'm sure he can get this constituency to the polls. (Grade - A-)