Good Riddance - Thoughts And Prayers

Tracklist: 

01. Edmund Pettus Bridge 

02. Rapture 

03. Don't Have Time 

04. Our Great Divide

 05. Wish You Well 

06. Precariat 

07. No King But Caesar 

08. Who We Are 

09. No Safe Place 

10. Pox Americana 

11. Lo Que Sucede 

12. Requisite Catastrophes

Release date: July 19, 2019

Label: Fat Wreck  

Format: CD, LP, digiatl 

 Reviewed by Trope Misanthrope. 

Three years after the band’s triumphant return with Peace In Our Time, Santa Cruz skate-punk legends Good Riddance have released a new record called Thoughts and Prayers via Fat Wreck Chords. Thoughts and Prayers, a scathing 12-songer, is the ninth studio album in GR canon.

 But that’s not counting The Phenomenon of Craving E.P. that directly followed Operation Phoenix. For a while, GR presented themselves as the only real hardcore band on Fat, but almost as a schizophrenic band. They couldn’t figure out whether they were pop punk or blistering hardcore.

 I liked GR perfectly the way they were pre-Operation Phoenix but it was producer Bill Stevenson (Descendents/ALL/Only Crime) who helped GR hone and perfect their unique sound. Since that punk rock union, GR has recorded most of their records at Stevenson’s The Blasting Room studio, with the exception of the band’s last two records, which were tracked at Motor Studios in NorCal but still produced by Stevenson.

 The main songwriter in GR is vocalist Russ Rankin. Rankin’s lyrics are right up there with Bad Religion in terms of their depth and vocabulary. Nowadays, even after decades of listening to both GR and BR, I’m more likely to pull out the ol’ dictionary reading GR lyrics than I am BR.

 Rankin has kept his wits and his pencil sharp. Thoughts and Prayers proves that with gusto. The album opens with what is sure to become another classic movie clip before tearing into Edmund Pettis Bridge — a song that hearkens back to Out Of Mind in its chord progressions and melody — arguably the catchiest song on the record.

Song two is Rapture, which sees GR straddle the old California hardcore sound alongside the band’s classic melodic undertones on the chorus. The hook on the chorus of Rapture has been stuck in my head for two days as of the writing of this review.

 Next come the two singles GR pre-released — Don’t Have Time and Our Great Divide. Both are excellent songs but Our Great Divide is one of the best songs on the record. This album has a few personal lyrics and songs, as Rankin is often wont to do, but most of the subject matter falls directly on the socio-political scale. That’s arguably where GR are most comfortable and where they best shine.

Make no mistake, Thoughts and Prayers is a very good record. I find it to be a more inspired album than its predecessor Peace In Our Time. Rankin was clearly in some sort of creative zone or trance writing this record.

In fairness, Rankin doesn’t get the credit he deserves as a songwriter and scion of skate-punk. As someone who’s been listening to GR since 1994, I put Rankin up there with the great songwriters of the genre, like BR’s Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz, Fat Mike Burkett of NOFX, Jim Cherry of Strung Out/Pulley/Zero Down, Jim Lindberg of Pennywise, Tony Sly of No Use For A Name and Joey Cape of Lagwagon. In fact, other than Graffin/Gurewitz and Cherry, I’m not sure there is a more talented songwriter to hail from the Epi/Fat scene than Rankin. That’s saying something.

 Rankin’s never been the drug-addled troubador, though he has tried his hand at a solo record and playing solo shows. A straight edge vegan with a passion for hockey, Rankin is a unique and refreshingly sane voice in the punk the rock arena. He’s written some of the best melodic hardcore songs of all-time, like Weight of the World, Shadows of Defeat, Darkest Days and United Cigar, to name a few.

Rankin adds a few new songs to his canon that’ll go down in history on Thoughts and Prayers. My favorite song on this record has to be No Safe Place. GR features their octave chords as leads in such an epic way, as perhaps no band from the Epi/Fat scene, and the bridge/outro on No Safe Place epitomizes that creative dopamine-inducer.

I give Thoughts and Prayers 3.5 out of four stars, only because the song Lo Que Sucede (sung in Spanish) didn’t hit home. But that’s just me. Maybe I missed the point. Thoughts and Prayers is still a phenomenal record that gets better the more you listen. It also happens to feature one of the best drummers of the genre Sean Sellers, whose performance is punk rock perfection yet again. Go buy this record.

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