If you've read any reviews of The Descendents' new EP, 'Merican, you'll likely have encountered a long rundown of dozens of other Descendents songs that these five songs are bound to remind you of. You'll also notice that no one finds this to be a problem, and are more giddy because they can draw stylistic lines back to the band's 80s catalog of awkwardness, alienation and food fetishism. For an industry where originality and an easily charted career transformation are paramount, The Descendents ease under the wire by dint of pure, untarnished love.
With albums as flawless as Liveage! and Milo Goes to College, and a mission statement that lacks the words "reshaping" and "new era," The Descendents have never made any bones about being desperately teenage, despite the creep of years, family and, in Milo Aukerman's case, an actual career. If their songs aren't dwelling on shitty parenting skills or unrequited affection, they're mocking the customs of the adult world and reveling in juvenilia. So 'Merican might come as a bit of a jab to the hardcore fan who always assumed they could count on at least one punk band to never change.
"Nothing with You" opens the album as a sigh of contentment over the laziness of true love, only breaking the illusion of a lost 80s master by mention of Mad About You and Seinfeld re-runs. Everything's in place on this song, from Aukerman's pleading vocals to Stephen Egerton's quick and tidy solo, and it resonates as strongly and vividly as anything they've recorded previously. But the following title song is like nothing they've done before. Unfortunately, it is a lot like what Bad Religion's done before: It sounds like that band soft shoeing a typical dismantling of the pretty picture of Americana. To be fair, The Descendents take a softer tone, listing the bad (racism, Joe McCarthy) alongside the good (Mark Twain, Otis Redding) which makes the song more about knowing the country you love before you slide down the steep slope of jingoism. An admirable effort, the song is a bright red flashing signal that the train has left the tracks.
The Descendents pick up the torch and tighten the slack with the other side of their love-song coin on the lost/never-had song "Here with Me", and they carry the momentum with a kinetic resignation letter in "I Quit". As Aukerman laments time not spent with his wife and the encroaching caricature of a Mick Jagger-aged rocker, the band seems to barely take a breath. It's a near-perfect capper on the stalwarts' first statement in seven years, and would that the album was as long as advertised. But then the hidden track, "Alive", starts in, chasing out all the fans who stuck through the culture shock of the title track. Being that "slow" and "heavy" are another two styles The Descendents have never dabbled in, the wall of sound-- complete with thorazine vocals and depressed riffs-- verges on smashing the band's already battered illusion. Like the title track, the closer's message suggests that four guys in their 40s singing hymns to teenage love and caffeinated excess is the sanest choice to make.
