The Descendents: Fresh Melodies, Old Shtick

It's been more than a decade since Southern California's Descendents reunited for the first time and turned a theory about the blending of buzzsaw hooks, bottomless cups of coffee, and perpetual adolescence into the 1985 punk-pop masterpiece I Don't Want To Grow Up (SST). That was right after the band's driving force, drummer Bill Stevenson, finished his productive stint in Black Flag and its dweeby vocalist, Milo Auckerman, returned from doing what he'd promised in the title of the group's 1982 farewell disc, Milo Goes to College (SST). Descendents' descendants the Offspring (and for that matter, Hagfish, Goldfinger, etc.) would eventually pull off the mean feat of making I Don't Want To Grow Up, as well as the two revved-up-and-tuneful discs that followed it, seem ahead of their time. And, if we stick to the same kind of cause-and-effect logic that Auckerman must now rely on in his postgraduate work in biology, that probably had a lot to do with the likable frontguy's recently reuniting for a second time with Stevenson. Stevenson, meanwhile, has spent the past couple of years bashing it out with All, an outfit that at its best is still the next best thing to the Descendents.

There's the history in a nutshell -- and to judge by Kiss and the Sex Pistols this summer, it's more important than anything likely to happen in the near future and much easier to crack. So any recent converts to the American church of punk guitar rock who haven't yet experienced the percolated pop thrills of I Don't Want To Grow Up, Enjoy!, and All (all on SST) are advised to read no further, lest they be tempted to pick up a copy of the new Descendents disc Everything Sucks (Epitaph) without first understanding that the criminally catchy single "Enjoy" really should have been a hit in 1986. Neither would we want anyone to come away from Everything Sucks thinking that the band have cynically altered their sound for the sake of mass appeal.

No, the new Descendents have picked up right where the old ones left off, which is where All (Stevenson with Descendents alum, bassist Karl Alvarez and guitarist Stephen Egerton, and a variety of vocalists) have been stagnating without a decent frontguy for the past few years. In fact, the only thing that really distinguished the new from the old when the triumphant Descendents played to a full house downstairs at the Middle East a week ago Thursday was the number of kids singing along. Auckerman -- who looked a little like Hank Rollins's nerdy cousin with his square jaw, thick glasses, and exaggerated hardcore moves -- could have stopped the band Bono-style on "Cheer" or the classic thrasher "I Don't Want To Grow Up" to let the crowd take over for a verse or two.

He didn't get half that audience support on Everything Sucks's almost equally hummable "I'm the One" or "When I Get Old." Perhaps the crisp hooks on those two just need a little more time to sink in. But there may be a bigger problem: twentysomething boys indulging in their last blast of adolescent innocence is fun and cute, even if when boys are being boys they sometimes get a little misogynist in the process. ("No FB," otherwise known as "No Fat Beaver" and featuring the zinger "I don't want to smell your stinky beave," is one example the Descendents dragged out of the vault at the Middle East.) But when guys past the age of 30 earnestly ask questions like "What will I be like when I get old?" and sing lines like "I hate girls" ("She Loves Me"), it gets a little ugly. I mean, hey guys, it might finally be time to grow up, because the melodies are still as fresh as ever, but the shtick is starting to get old.

-- Matt Ashare