This New Jersey band is like a group of sport guys. You love them, they motivate you, you do tattoos with their faces. They make you laugh, you make them laugh, no matter whether you win or lose. The Bouncing Souls are pioneers of exuberant and melodic punk, and Simplicity is their 10th album. It falls into your ears smoothly by going back to roots. Although How I Spent My Summer Vacation is the summit of their career, their current release is almost as good as the heyday.
From the opening track Driving All Night, the return is obvious. While listening to it, you feel this desire to get in the car and leave everything behind. Yes, it’s that good. Only 120 seconds later, the song is over, but the journey has just begun. The collection of 13 exhilarating songs lasts less than 22 minutes, and there are only few half-ballades. Gravity and Up To Us are the best among them. Perpetual dynamite tracks, such as Euphoria, Digital Twilight Zone and Rebel Song, lead the album and I am grateful that there are so many of them. Back to basics approach works so well for this boys that there is not one single moments when it sounds like they are holding on to their old fame. Everything is vibrant, powerful and perfectly balanced.
The Bouncing Souls also use personal clichés. Combination of experience, reality and maturity with almost panglossian optimism emerges into enormous will for life. Themes about authenticity, social deviation and letting go dominate the whole record in a cheerful manner, which is not an easy manner to accomplish in punk genre.
Simplicity comprises a special dose of simplicity, without lies or extravagance. Here and there, they might sound generic, but even generic parts sound rejuvenated. Life is sometimes just as Simplicity – so simple, and the marks are only numbers. Press play and enjoy the life.
