Bad Cop/Bad Cop: The Ride | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- If you were an alternative-minded teenager of a certain generation; you quite possibly have fond memories of the classic Fat Wreck Chords label samplers, along with their fellow Californian pop punk label Epitaph's Punk'o'rama series. Both rode the pop punk revival into countless suburban bedrooms, and often moreso than the actual albums released, it is those label samplers that so many people remember. They were cheap, and offered an introduction not just to a band, but to a whole world of punk rock.

It's two decades since those labels were at peak popularity, and most of us have grown older and our musical tastes moved on. Punk rock trends have changed too from that era of melodic skate punk. Many people, though they may reminisce about those records, would be surprised to hear that Fat Wreck Chords are still releasing music.

But they are, and The Ride, the third album from Los Angeles pop punks Bad Cop/Bad Cop, is the latest. The most notable departure from those old days is in Bad Cop/Bad Cop's all-woman lineup. Sadly, in the classic days of skate punk the only female voices on those compilations were Cinder Block of Tilt and Brody Dalle of The Distillers. That's a welcome change, though the fact that one of the tags on the album's bandcamp page is "girl band" shows we still have a little way to go.

Other than that though, it feels kind of like The Ride could have just popped out of a time capsule from the year 2000, when you stuck that Fat Wreck Chords sticker on your skate deck. It mixes slogans of political change and self-empowerment with heartbreak and crushes, to a soundtrack of chunky power chords and poppy harmonies. Bad Cop/Bad Cop are not kids discovering those old records either - they are pop-punk lifers, old enough to have been around when bands sounding like them played to packed Warped Tour audiences.

The chorus of the lead single and album highlight loudly proclaims singer Stacey Dee is "not a simple girl". This is no doubt true, but as far as the music goes, simplicity is integral to the appeal of this kind of pop punk. Generic pop melodies played loud and fast, it is the perfect recipe to get fists pumping and mouths singing along. The lyrical themes are also simple and familiar for pop punk fans.

"Will you wake up, and join the resistance?" asks Dee on Certain Kind of Monster. No worries there about intersectionality, performativity or any of the other theory that gets debated on political discussion forums. The DIY ethic of punk is celebrated not just as a way to play music but a motto for life - I’m not a victim of what happens to me/I’d rather dwell in possibility" go the lyrics to I Choose. Which is easy to sing but harder to live if you're one of the starving millions whose circumstances really haven't given you cause for hope. And Stacey Dee has been around the punk scene long enough to have seen it fractured by people drifting out, dying young, or drinking and drugging themselves to oblivion. Yet My Community resolutely declares the power of the scene. The album ends with a cheesy acoustic ballad saying " sing with me/or sing your own song/I don’t mind, just as long as you find your voice

In the complex world of 2020, Bad Cop/Bad Cop stick out. It's that simple worldview, as much as the music, that seems to hark back to an earlier era of pop punk. As such, it is unlikely to break out beyond a niche audience like those bands did back then. Still, there is something beautiful and life-affirming about this album. That siren song of punk rock - to community, to doing it yourself, to rejecting the mainstream society around you. To hear it sung again by people who haven't given upon the dream brings me a joy I rarely get from more musically or thematically complicated records.

It's not a simple world; but some messages, some dreams, just work better when presented that way. Punk rock is not known for its subtlety, and the pure punk energy running through the veins of Bad Cop/Bad Cop is a serum that changed my life and that I'm glad still exists.

Punk can be, as Stacey Dee sings, "A means to connect/An outlet for complex and confusing emotions." But she opens that song with the secret appeal of punk -  "I will write such a simple song/That you can’t help but sing along"

- Andy Paine.
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=142037364/size=large/bgcol=ff…; seamless><a href="http://badcopbadcop.bandcamp.com/album/the-ride">The Ride by Bad Cop/Bad Cop</a></iframe>