Review Summary: By the old bootstraps..
Most every aspect of Rancid’s new album
Trouble Maker suggests revisionism of self. The red-lit cover of a radically spiked punk (a haircut that neither permanent member of the band has sported in eight-plus years) is a dulled twist of
Indestructible and the blurry walker off
Life Won’t Wait. Gurewitz is back to produce, but this time around, the band travelled back to his Epitaph studios, once their permanent recording base. And the logo’s been resuscitated all the way from their debut, now a 24-year old artifact of the California scene in its second coming. That bent of resurrection shows.
Trouble Maker feels like the band are forcibly cribbing from their own blueprints (transplanting The Clash from London into Northern California).
And at surface value alone, everything looks and sounds right. Songs rush in and out, built on sing-along choruses, punchy bass and crackling guitars, rarely racing past the three-minute mark. Yet it all feels as lifeless as a face that by now has had one too many lifts.
Ultimately, the painstakingly-engineered resurgent nature of the LP is what holds it back. Even the most rallying and boisterous moments of
Trouble Maker feel aggressively propagated, the band screaming too hard about having fun to believably be having any. Frederiksen’s solos, once a frenetic and spontaneously loose display, are rigidly competent. Matt Freeman’s virtuoso fretwork continues to be the band’s reliable backbone. He’s long since been the ace up Rancid’s sleeve, one that they haven’t found a way to utilize with any sort of deftness since their 2000’s self-titled effort. Sadly, that trend continues on
Trouble Maker. He’s underused, in both playing capacities, and in terms of his strong, gruff vocals.
Adding to these missteps are Rancid’s old-standing drawbacks that continue to plague them. Armstrong’s voice, never a particular marvel, could at least sound charmingly off-the-cuff in the past. Here though, his growingly wispy slur pulls back songs that could have otherwise managed more momentum. The drums are typically buried in the mix, leaving Freeman to prop up the rhythm section and generate thrust on this own. Repetitve buzzword lyrics on "Farewell Lola Blue" and "I Kept a Promise" bring down otherwise redeemable songs into vocal monotony.
Single “Telegraph Avenue” is their umpteenth love letter to the East Bay. Armstrong singing about tear gas and riot police sounds incredibly dated, given that the East Bay has by now gone through the second tier of gentrification, its young residents currently looking to whitewash Oakland. It’s a moot point regardless. I don’t know how many riot cops Armstrong has actually seen in his youth, but it’s evident that by now he’s seen more ritzy hotel rooms.
The best moments on
Trouble Maker predictably happen when the band get out of their own way and let things go as they do. Rowdy, shuffling riffs propel the opening one-two punch of "Track Fast" and "Ghost of a Change." Ska-tinted “Where I’m Going” is easy fun, and the most effortless dancehall number they’ve done in a long time. There’s nothing particularly brilliant about the song, but it’s a rare instant when Rancid actually seem to be having a decent time. The organs pulse happily and Frederiksen bumps up the proceedings with a swinging solo. Unfortunately, from then, the middle of the album sags under the weight of tediously unvaried songs that in better days would have figured as little more than filler or B-sides. Things pick up somewhat towards the end with the psychobilly-informed "Beauty of the Pool Hall," Freeman coming out swinging for a change. But on a spotty track-list that’s nineteen songs long, these instants are spaced too far between for the album to generate any kind of sustainable heat. Tepid closer "This is Not the End" is eerily foreshadowing that there's more of that auto-piloting to come.
The verdict on
Trouble Maker is as banal as it is expected from a band who are now toiling away in their third decade. It’s nothing they haven’t done before and done considerably better. And given that their halcyon days are rounding the twenty-year mark, that’s as inspired as one can reasonably expect Rancid to sound today.
Trouble Maker may be a considerable step forward from the bland, inane mess of 2014’s
Honor, but all things being relative, it was a decidedly easy step to make. Who knows? This band may still have some life left in them. Time will tell. Life won’t wait.
