DESCENDENTS
Cool to Be You

THE REVIEW

Does it really change that much between adolescence and adulthood? The emotional and social concerns that you experience as an adult might be the same you had as a teenager. Perhaps maturing only means replacing some worries with others: from «Oh my God, I risk a failing grade in geometry, the teacher will kick my ass» to «Oh my God, I underreported thirteen thousand euros. The tax authorities will kick my ass», from «Oh no, here come the bullies from the churchyard showing off because they have Gypsy friends with mopeds» to «Oh no, here come those from the parish club, all happy since they got that moron put on the city council who was campaigning for Rifondazione at 15 and now is with CL». Then some people wonder why most tend to become more cynical with time.

The Descendents probably agree. They haven’t changed much since they debuted in their twenties with their masterpiece Milo Goes to College in 1982: neither with their reunion in their thirties with Everything Sucks (1996), in their forties with Cool to Be You in 2004, nor in their fifties with Hypercaffium Spazzinate in 2016. Usually, playing the same things for thirty years produces an invincible smell of mold in the air, and reunions too often reek of mothballs. Not so with the Descendents, who have shown up incredibly well-prepared, reaching the zenith of pop-punk and delivering an album as immediate as it is meticulously crafted. It’s a grown-up Milo Auckerman in Cool to Be You. It’s a Milo who, precisely because he’s mature and reflective, knows that not much has changed since his college years. Cool to Be You juxtaposes political songs like 'Merican with poignant tracks like One More Day alongside the usual anthems about fart jokes like Blast Off and descriptions of nerds giving a boot to the idiotic classmates like in Mass Nerder. And, incredibly, they manage not to seem at all ridiculous like certain millionaire rockers preaching poverty, jewel-clad fifty-year-old rappers rambling about life in the ghetto, or metalheads with thirty-year careers who still get angry at their narrow-minded parents.

Cool to Be You is the masterpiece that the generic '90s pop-punk band never managed to create; they are the Descendents who don’t deliver their best record but succeed incredibly well at being themselves.