Pop punk holds a special place in everyone’s hearts. Who can forget listening to Blink-182’s Enema of the State when they were younger, listening to songs about getting drunk or getting it on? How about the time when Green Day had pretensions about being a small-time punk band, releasing albums like Dookie full of songs about love, drinking and getting really stinking high? Vancouver outfit The Riff Randells think fondly on these times and try to bring you back to the simpler times of the mid-1990s with their newest lip- gloss-punk album Doublecross.
Doublecross is a straightforward pop- punk album, lacking in any form of pretension. The Riff Randells are out to make an album for a 14-year-old’s pool party and they succeed quite admirably. The group’s lead singer, Kathy, coos about love and dating over 11 simplistic, yet wholly entertaining, surf-punk tracks. The album is pure pop with a punk twist and the band is the first to admit it.
This lack of posturing makes the album almost innovative in its willingness to indulge in its own poppiness and be fun for the sake of fun.
One of the problems with Doublecross is just who the CD is actually marketed to. This type of music is an absolute rarity in the over-saturated market of the melodrama-based pop-punk community.
With such energetic hooks and catchy riffs, fans of pop punk will find an album to fill out their record collection. Coincidentally, it’s also the perfect album for slip’n’sliding to.