Random Records with Steve O

Good Riddance - Thoughts and Prayers

I’ve written on here before about how awesome Good Riddance is and how underappreciated too – I definitely don’t think they get the recognition they deserve for being around since basically the Epitaph/Fat Wreck glory days of the mid-90s to today (with a short hiatus in there). And then, back in 2015, Peace In Our Time came out and rocketed its way up our bracket, ultimately losing to Leftöver Crack in the final. So I don’t know if I can still call them underappreciated. And that’s where the wonderfully snarky titled Thoughts and Prayers comes in. I don’t need to elaborate any on the political climate that this record is a statement of – we’re all too depressed to hear any more about that. Good Riddance has always been prescient on their social commentary, and a record titled Thoughts and Prayers, in this social climate, is scathing in its own way.

They start with a brilliant illustration of the cyclical nature of history with “Edmund Pettus Bridge,” which you might recognize from the Civil Rights Movement. “Rapture” flies by in under a minute, “Pox Americana” is barely longer, and “Don’t Have Time” doesn’t waste any, well, time, either. It’s one of the themes of the record – clocking in at under a half hour, Russ Rankin and crew get straight to the point. Tracks like “Edmund Pettus Bridge,” “No King But Caesar,” and “Who We Are” build to epic conclusions. “Lo Que Sucede” is the first Good Riddance song in Spanish. But throughout Good Riddance doesn’t beat you over the head with heaviness, indeed, the melodic rules on most of these twelve tracks, driven by Rankin’s decisive vocals. The message is clean, as is the aim, in lines like “Build walls out of fear and greed discard the ones in need of / Humanity and grace and so we falter as before,” from “Our Great Divide.” But Russ lets the venom come across in the words instead of the delivery.

Thoughts and Prayers reminds me a lot of their last pre-hiatus release, 2006’s My Republic. The tone seems similar, the songs strike a more melodic pace, and they’re a little more restrained (see Chuck’s screaming on a couple of tracks during Peace In Our Time that are absent here). But goddamn do they have some caustic lines here. Take a look at “Precariat” and its not so veiled accusations: “In the absence of truth our fallacies spread like a virus / To the edges of civilizations regarded as pure / And every breach in the fence is the cowards defense / To perpetuate and sterilize / And the apoplectic scions linger on.” For what the record lacks in musical bite, and that’s the biggest bummer for me here, it makes up for in its acerbic lyrics. So it should come as no surprise that Thoughts and Prayers is best enjoyed reading along with the lyrics.

Listen to Thoughts and Prayers here. How do you think they’ll do in this year’s bracket?