Fly guys

The Offspring do it again

by Sean Richardson

It's not like the Offspring to resist a gimmick -- a quick listen to any of the band's biggest hits will confirm that. "Come Out and Play" and "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" both defined the rock tune as Saturday Night Live comedy sketch, with the goofy recurrent soundbites being more essential to their appeal than actual pop hooks. A week ago Tuesday, the Orange County punks unleashed their most impressive gimmick yet, giving away $1 million of their own money to one lucky Internet contest winner live on MTV. It was just the kind of extravagant display of goodwill that major-label punk was invented for, not to mention a way better opening-week publicity stunt than Limp Bizkit's releasing two videos at the same time.

The gimmicks don't stop there on the Offspring's Conspiracy of One (Columbia), their latest album and sixth overall. Singer Dexter Holland slips back into geeky white rap mode on "Original Prankster," sharing the mike with Jersey hip-hop hero/rock-cameo slut Redman over a sample of War's "Low Rider" and a barrage of errant percussion. A Hispanic voice cries "You can do it" as Holland warns his prankster buddy, "You'll see there comes a day/Catches up to you yeah." It's another glimpse into the multicultural cultural void the group explored on their '98 comeback disc, Americana (Columbia), and once again it sounds just as obnoxious as a carload of teenagers at a Taco Bell drive-through window.

The Offspring didn't always settle into their trademark sound so easily. "Come Out and Play" was a bit of an aberration for the group when it appeared on their '94 breakthrough, Smash (Epitaph) -- so much so that they couldn't even replicate it on their follow-up major-label debut, Ixnay on the Hombre (Columbia). On that commercial failure, they banked instead on a misguided one-two punch of generic OC hardcore ("All I Want") and pathetic power-balladeering ("Gone Away"). Throw in the slightly more palatable penchant for middle-of-the-road arena rock they've showed at other times ("Self-Esteem," "The Kids Aren't Alright") and you've got a band with an identity crisis so deep you couldn't fault any serious punk for calling them frauds.

But it's okay to be a fraud if you can write a decent tune, and the Offspring come up with more of those than they usually do on the typically chameleonic Conspiracy of One. They wear their blatantly commercial influences on their sleeves, adopting the explosive groove from the chorus of Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" on "Living in Chaos" and using a suspiciously Garbage-sounding drum loop on "Special Delivery." Things get even more embarrassing when they start stealing from their own backyard on the sweet, uptempo love song "Want You Bad," which apes platinum punks-of-the-moment Blink-182 all the way down to the juvenile humor of its fake lyric sheet. But it turns out Holland does girl trouble almost as well as his spiritual little brothers do, and the disc's most shameless moment is also its most affecting.

"One Fine Day" is the group's most surprising move, a UK-style hardcore sing-along about drinking and watching football (American football, it seems, but we'll forgive them) that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the first Dropkick Murphys album. After that, though, the stylistic wandering gets tiresome. Holland pours his heart out on "Denial, Revisited," a dreary ballad that adds Pearl Jammy guitars to the mercilessly resurrected "Gone Away" template. And it's tempting to blame first-time Offspring producer Brendan O'Brien when the early '90s rear their ugly head again on "Vultures," a hookless imitation of Nirvana's "Come As You Are."

Thanks to the group's ultimate deference to melody and Holland's engagingly stoopid lyrics, their scattershot approach is more hit than miss on Conspiracy of One. The more they branch out, though, the more I want to hear them play the generic OC hardcore of "All I Want" and their '92 snowboard video hit "Session" -- the style they seem most comfortable with anyway. They do this better than ever on "Come Out Swinging," a swarm of bass-drum hammering and buzzing guitar melodies that slows down in the middle for a surprisingly lush choral breakdown. Holland is also more likely to act his age playing the music of his youth, as the soul-searching "Dammit, I Changed Again" attests (Blink-inspired title notwithstanding). But the Offspring's silliness factor is what keeps the kids coming back, and the entertainment value of their albums certainly doesn't suffer for it either.

The Offspring come to the Worcester Centrum with Cypress Hill and MxPx on December 13. Call (508) 228-6000 for tickets.