Offspring Month: Splinter (2003)

In its own time, Splinter was the band's most diverse, fan-splitting, experimenting album. I starts out with a great punch, but it's over even before you could say "Wait, where the hell is Pass Me By?"...

The Offspring - Splinter (2003) - singles marked with red

video links provided where available

• Neocon ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Bang-bang, it hammers out something that's too long for an intro, and too short for a song. One of the best openers ever though, and by the time you're done with the record, you'll be wishing for an ending as cool as this.
• The Noose ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Well our! hard-hitting dark sound from Americana meets that crystal clear Conspiracy-quality here, and the fusion sounds awesome. Really offspringish, fast punk, surprisingly dark lyrics (and it totally gets away with the fact that in most places only the whoas make the lines rhyme), and an overall powerful-as-hell mood. It's easily one of my favorites from them.
• Long Way Home ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Contains the line I splinter by own design. Age-old punk cliché about finding your way home again, but it's a neat little tune, and if you happen to actually live a long way from your home, it finds its long way into your heart. Jeez, that sounded awkward. Just like the mini drum solos before the verses - they come off as unnecessary Ron Welty trolling (Splinter was the first album without him on drums), and sound kinda out of place. Overall it's still a fine song.
• Hit That - ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - mv - Stupid and catchy tounge-in-cheek dance-pop sound with silly keyboards over some heavy guitars and pretty dark lyrics about sex-obsessed teens. In a way it's typical Offspring, yet something really different. Be careful: if you're a fan, you must hate it with a passion. If you are not, you might find it the best pop-rock hit of this century.
• Race Against Myself ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Heavy and slow, powerful enough, filled with dramatic lyrics and some rock clichés. Those backing vocals hurt it, a lot. One of their weaker self-pity song.
• (Can't Get My) Head Around You ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - mv - Starts out steady and low, then explodes into catchy punk-rock heaven, like a bed sheet splintering orgasm. The somewhat nonsense lyrics about someone being really nonsense work pretty well, and the music, oh boy... it's a short song, but every section is perfectly timed, and they blend into each other really well. It never gets dull, it never gets old, the only thing it gets is more bo.... OK, you got me, around the ninth review post I'm really struggling with the right words to praise the loving crap out of a song. It's a cool track, trust me. And the muic video, shot with over 125 cameras, really is something amazing.
• The Worst Hangover Ever ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Something new again, an intentionally idiotic reggae song about you guessed it, having a hangover. The lyrics are kinda funny, and the music, although a tad irritating, is a passable, at least well-produced little tune (look out for Dexter's almost subtle taaa-da-ta-da-da-daaaa singalong with that trumpet). Too bad it landed on the record's center, between Head Around You and Never Gonna Find Me, two high-octane, darker songs. Mood-killing at its worst.
• Never Gonna Find Me ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Serious exploitation of whoas cue in this hard-hitting anthem of the outsider archetype. Again, a very relatable topic about hiding your true self from other people, slapped on a mostly typical fast Offspring tune. After a very let's say, splinterish breakdown - it sounds so similar to the one in The Noose, I'd say they are basically interchangeable - at the end the whoas return with an echoing wind machine and/or chopper sound....
• Lightning Rod ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - ... which serves as the intro for this little gem, welcoming a few threatening guitar riffs and Dex to join in. After 20 seconds the mix explodes into one of the greatest punk-rock tracks of the century so far, an epically sad song about - I guess - the responsibility for our own and other people's life in any way you want to interpret it, and the tragedy of failing at the task. Lyrically it's in the same vain as Race Against Myself, but overall it's more powerful, urgent, and I'm going to say it, much more poetic - especially the breakdown, if it finds you in the right mood, chills on your spine are guaranteed. Some weaker lyrical moments aside, my only problem with this track is the way too short outro. It's a shocking masterpiece.
• Spare Me the Details ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - An acoustic-driven, ironic and surprisingly fun song about the sympathetic situation of finding out your girlfriend is cheating on you. The lyrics also mention Jägermeister, a certain German booze which has a real cult in Central-Europe, and is one of Dexter's favorite drinks. You can feel they were having fun recording this one, and it's a good piece from their "feelgood" catalog, but with the record's overall dark, heavy direction, I somehow wish Splinter was spared (ouch!) from it. Same goes for The Worst Hangover Ever and the closing track as well, but before we get there, there's a neat little song called...
• Da Hui ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - mv - Punching your face like the meanest tsunami waves, here comes a hard-hitting and funny surf-punk song about Da Hui, a surf group from the North Shore of Hawaii. It's a tough gang, and you should try avoiding any conflict with them if you are riding the waves of their territory. Yep, basically this is what the whole "Don't-fuck-with-Da-Hui! 'Cause-Da-Hui-will-fuck-with-you!" stuff means. They are celebrated in a fast, short track, with a touch of paranoia and hilarity at the same time. Lucky for Dex and Noodles, Da Hui themselves really liked the song and four members agreed to appear in the music video with them.
• When You're in Prison ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪  ♪ - Now this is something really special that won't fail to provide WTF and "dafaqu did I just listen to?" moments to first timers. It's one of their classic joke songs, the evergreen story of the prisoner and it's slippery soap, sung and played up like a swing recording from the 1930's. In it's old timey way it's a pretty nice song actually, but when you come for Offspring, you certainly don't expect this. As a bonus track it would've been awesome, but as part of the actual tracklist, it went down as probably their most disappointing album ending.

Other stuff:

• Defy You (Acoustic Version) - Bonus track on the Japanese edition. The original version - a single from 2001, recorded for the Orange County soundtrack, their very last song with Ron on drums - was originally supposed to appear on Splinter, but Columbia, I'm guessing, has decided in the end. To this day you won't find it on any of the studio albums, but don't worry, I will have a few words about it very soon.
• Pass Me By - A few riffs is all the public has ever heard from this one, in the second half of this studio video, the full song never made it to Splinter or any of the following albums. Fans still refuse to forget about it though, as judging from that few seconds, this could have been a neat little track with some moody, Dirty Magic-esque grungyness in it. Let's hope one day it gets a release or a leak, or if anything, we get to hear that riff reworked into a brand new song.
• The Kids Aren't Alright (Island Style) and When You're in Prison (Instrumental) - Just like CO1, Splinter is an Enhanced CD, putting it into a computer gets you goodies such as these two mp3 files (Island Style Kids is a chilly instrumental version with Hawaiian guitars, I like it a lot), the music video for Da Hui, a studio tour video with Chris Higgins, and four wallpapers. 
• There's also a version which comes with a DVD, featuring the aforementioned Da Hui clip, it's making-of, and a video with Dexter and Noodles discussing each and every Splinter song.

Almost ten years after its release, this record still generates epic arguments and fights among fans, but most of them agree that Splinter would have worked better as an EP, dropping the funny songs and concentrating on the heavy ones. Despite the bonus stuff, with its 32 minutes of playtime, the album feels really short anyway, and without Defy You and Pass Me By it's like listening to an edited, robbed release of a greater whole. I can't shake the feeling that with those two songs on it, this could have been one of their best work to date.

Still, I like Splinter a lot. Songs like The Noose and Lightning Rod have been longtime favorites of mine, and maybe because its short length, sometimes I find myself listening to the album over and over again, for hours. I also think that its booklet had some of the best artwork from The Offspring yet, a mixture of paintings and abstract photography. The cover is pretty neat too. I wonder if that dead rat on the back is a reference to TMNT's Master Splinter...

Next time; Next to you.