Offspring: Greatest Hits

Herald rating: * * *

Unlike Green Day, Dexter Holland and his lads have never grown up. It's not that Green Day have started dressing maturely, but with the release of last year's excellent American Idiot they did grow up. The appearance of two, nine-minute long punk rock operas were proof of that.

Offspring would never be able to write those sorts of songs, let alone concentrate long enough to play them. To be fair to this band, who started out way back in 1985, do they really want to? No, probably not.

But this Greatest Hits shows how tired things can get when you never deviate from a formula.

Fun, and maybe a smattering of stupidity, are, or at least were, Offspring's two best qualities, especially when you hark back to 1994's kick ass Smash and 1998's more classic sounding, Americana. Tracks like Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated), Self Esteem, Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), and Original Prankster, are pop tunes of American pie-proportions and show why these guys got so big.

But the rest of the 15 tracks here (including new song Can't Repeat) are why Offspring are not so much pop punk, more novelty punk.

But hey, they were always pretty fly for white guys.

Label: Sony/BMG