Though they were raised in the cradle of Orange County, California, punk, the Offspring are more about songs than attitude. This quartet's sound has as much to do with the crazed, anything-goes novelty of Nuggets-era garage rock from the Sixties as it does with the loud-fast skateboard anthems of the last decade. Half of Americana, the band's fifth album, salutes mid-Eighties hardcore, and it's a record that any TSOL fan has already heard a million times: pogo-pony polka beats; bass lines that fly on a carpet of eighth notes; zooming, solo-free guitar riffs; and lots of "whoah-ohhh!" sing-along parts. Frontman Dexter Holland rants on about "fragile lives, shattered dreams" on "The Kids Aren't Alright" and, on another track, offers this SoCal extreme-sports manifesto: "Faster now, you know I got no brakes." There's no sense of risk, though -- even the hyperventilating remake of Morris Albert's pathetic "Feelings" is predictably snide.

But the other half of Americana flips purists the bird. The Offspring toss processed percussion and wordless surf-ballad harmonies into their bag of hooks on "She's Got Issues," while "Pay the Man" is a three-part, eight-minute opus with a pronounced Middle Eastern vibe. With steel drum and sleigh bells, "Why Don't You Get a Job?" echoes the insidious singsongy charm of both the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia." And "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" is the goofball, Latin-loco-rock successor to the band's catchy-as-hell 1994 single "Come Out and Play"; the new track is even reprised as a mariachi instrumental. This may not be fuel for the punk lifers in the mosh pit, but those who value pop for its gleeful window-smashing novelty will find something to crank up.

By Greg Kot, from "Rolling Stone" magazine