Bowling For Soup – 'Pop Drunk Snot Bread' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Greatest Of All Time

2. I Wanna Be Brad Pitt

3. Hello Anxiety

4. Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It)

5. Bowling For Soup Pee Break

6. The Best We Can

7. Alexa Bliss

8. Burn Out

9. June Carter Cash (Lost And Found)

10. Public Service Announcement

11. Killin’ ‘Em With Kindness

12. Wouldn’t Change A Thing

13. The Letter 3 (Sitcom Song)

14. After All These Beers

15. Greatest oO All Time (Reprise)

Bowling for Soup are one of those bands that always take me back to a certain time in my life. Back to 2002, when 'Girl all the Bad Guys Want' was on constant rotation on Kerrang TV and every radio station in the country. Anyone else miss those days? When Rock, Punk and Metal actually got airplay? Crazy times.

Anyway, I’ve been a fan since then, and while part of it is nostalgia, most of it is just that they know what they are good at and play to their strengths, which means that they haven’t suffered the same fate of many early 2000’s acts where they have just become a shadow of their former selves.

So that bodes well for this new album, yes? It absolutely does. This band aren’t ashamed of being cranky grown ups while still feeling like teenagers at heart, and nowhere is this more obvious than the single “Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It)”. A perfect encapsulation of how they as a band feel now, which has a great riff and ridiculous jokes in it, making it one of the best tracks on the album.

Other songs that are standouts include “Alexa Bliss”, which is a song about the wrestler of the same name, “Hello Anxiety” which tells quite a moving story over a jaunty chord sequence and “Killin’ ‘Em with Kindness” which gets you chanting “Killing Motherfuckers, Killing Motherfuckers, Killing Motherfuckers with Kindness”.

But for me, the best track on the album is “June Carter Cash (Lost and Found)”. This is one of those quintessential Bowling for Soup songs – from the string skipping opening riff, through the harmony laden vocal line (with the occasional swear word), and the singalong chorus. It deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as “Girl all the Bad Guys Want”, “1985”, “The Bitch Song” and all of the other top tier Bowling for Soup songs.

This album is a perfect antidote to the depressing nature of real life, politics and the news nowadays. No matter what age you are, if you put this on you’ll feel like a teenager again, filled with hope, energy, excitement and the desire to drink and mess about all night. And that’s what all of us need right now.