ALBUM REVIEW: Pop Drunk Snot Bread – Bowling For Soup

After nearly 30 years of antics, punk rock legends BOWLING FOR SOUP are going to have a lot of memories to share. If you’re about to sit down and listen to album number 11, Pop Drunk Snot Bread, then expect nostalgia, song references and a lot of reminders that they’re a bunch of Gen Xers.

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the history books have so many chapters on us / And if we look back on the years, it’s easy to see exactly where we fit in” – these are the playfully arrogant lyrics that open the first track Greatest of All Time. The TENACIOUS D-style song tells of their history, their message and their status in the genre, which no one can really argue with considering we were all born knowing about Nona, Dickies and a time before NIRVANA. This tongue-in-cheek approach and mentioning of their ages are humoured for one song, maybe two, but four becomes quite the stretch. One of the oldest lead singles Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It) follows shortly after, speaking of things that would make MACHINE GUN KELLY scream: their lack of TikTok knowledge and new-found love for New Balance.

Wouldn’t Change A Thing is a beautifully upbeat acoustic track that is of course given its injection of BFS lyrics like “When I was a kid, Zoom was a TV show and I had telephone hanging on the kitchen wall” before delving into their appreciation of the lives they got to live thanks to music. The classic early 00s tune After All These Beers, which wonderfully encapsulates BUSTED’s Year 3000 from the same era, speaks of what they’ve been able to achieve while revolving their lives around hedonism. While it’s great to relive these moments with BFS through these songs, it brings about a sense of dread, questioning why are they being so sentimental all of a sudden, and the dawning that they really are middle-aged men singing about the same daft topics they were in the 90s.

In between these feelings of awe, joy and shock, there are also sentimental moments. The most strangely powerful one comes during a piano-lead elevator interlude narrated by a Morgan Freeman impersonator, titled Public Service Announcement. Only 39 seconds long, he states “Remember that you are important. This planet is better with you on it and BOWLING FOR SOUP loves you.” While odd and completely unanticipated in its lead up, one can imagine it’d be quite nice for it to come on shuffle during a bad day.

The slow country-twinged track The Best We Can equally shows a different side of BFS, not only in the stripped-back, loved-up lyrics, but also the style. Within this long and (obviously) punk rock record, a hint of variation is welcomed with open arms, especially in a way that doesn’t sound drastically out of place like many other artists fall victim to. The same can be said of Killin’ ‘Em With Kindness. No one could predict the hip-hop one-line chorus that chimes in amongst the generically BFS verses. It elevates their humour outside of ridiculous and uninspired (in this song’s case) lyrics into trying and blatantly failing at falsetto vocals and openly laughing at their over-the-top juxtaposition.

Standing out clearly from any other songs however are Alexa Bliss and I Wanna Be Brad Pitt. Name-dropping celebrities is a classic BFS move and makes a track instantly relatable – which is what the band try to be at every waking moment. It’s not only lyrics like “He was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma / So was my mom, I wonder if she knew his mom” and “Her favourite song’s Girl All The Bad Guys Want […] She’s got a pet pig named Larry-Steve and he’s so smart” that make them fit perfectly alongside their most infamous hits; within these two songs, the riffs, tempo and vigour of the choruses fit the blueprint of early 00s punk rock and would fit in perfectly during this period (if the references weren’t a little too advanced).

Pop Drunk Snot Bread in general could be viewed as a nostalgic trip of an influential band going through their highs of the last couple of decades, or just 15 songs shouting about how old and out of touch they are – but hey remember those big songs they keep mentioning? But one thing no one can deny is that pop drunk really is snot bread, because BOWLING FOR SOUP are never going to lay it to rest.

Rating: 7/10

Pop Drunk Snot Bread is out now via Brando/Que-So Records.

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