The Offspring: Conspiracy Of One

The Offspring: Conspiracy Of One

The Offspring makes three kinds of songs, in ascending order of toxicity: There's the two-and-a-half-minute speedball spit out so quickly it leaves little effect beyond making your knee reflexively bounce. There's the slick, overblown love song that could be mistaken for a Winger hit (1997's inexplicable "Gone Away" being the most egregious example). And then you have "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" and the new "Original Prankster," which sound unnervingly like The Offspring parodying a "Weird Al" Yankovic parody of The Offspring, the unbearable result being the kind of stupidity that thinks it's clever. Those hopped-up novelty songs abound on 1998's Americana, a leading reason it warrants consideration for the title of Worst Album Of The '90s, a record bad enough to create a backlash against not only pop-punk, but also novelty songs, guitars, smug thirtysomethings, and the human race. So it qualifies as some sort of faint praise to say that the new Conspiracy Of One fares a bit better. Setting aside the abhorrent "Original Prankster," which plumbs new depths of Yankovic appropriation—and throws in a stupid Rob Schneider sample to boot—the bulk of the album indulges The Offspring's preferable loud-fast-shrill side, breezing through harmlessly speedy fare like "Come Out Swinging." "Denial, Revisited" is the closest to a "Gone Away"-style mid-tempo power-ballad, and it's awful, but it's far from a career low point. Conspiracy Of One's crowd-pleasing novelty idiocy doesn't run much deeper than its single, and while that may disappoint those who enjoyed Americana, it makes it The Offspring's most tolerable record in years.

 
Join the discussion...