Social Distortion’s latest, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, is a maturity test of sorts. After all, Social D has been playing its unique brand of hard luck punk rock since the early 1980s. Give any band — let alone a punk band — 30 years, and they’re either going to experience some sonic evolution or they’re going to become, at best, one-note redundancies or, at worst, idiotic self-parodies.
Some, especially those who dug Social Distortion’s last album, 2004’s Sex. Love and Rock ’n’ Roll, will adore Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes. This is the first album frontman Mike Ness has ever produced. It’s also the first Social D album to feature female backup vocalists. And other than the few Rolling Stone covers Social Distortion has played in the past, it’s the first time we find the punks from California sounding an awful lot like the rockers from England. Fans of Social D’s longevity and continued growth (let’s call them the “mature” fans) will applaud the band’s continued staying power as they listen to tracks like the love ballad “Bakersfield” and the dirt nap meditation “Can’t Take It With You.”
Others, especially those who slam danced (long before the term “mosh” was coined) to 1983’s Mommy’s Little Monster may curse Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes as the undeniable admission that a once fierce punk band has finally put itself out to pasture. These fans (let’s call them the “Live Fast, Die Young” contingent — even if many of them are over 40 years old) might go so far as to cite the progression of the band’s studio album titles as evidence that Social Distortion has become more about social security than junkies, winos, pimps and whores.
Mommy’s Little Monster (1983), Prison Bound (1988), Social Distortion (1990) and Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell (1992) all sound like, and are, odes to misspent youth, lost love, anger and pain. 1996’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash maintained the signature sound and tone of the band’s earlier work, but the title itself betrays the tongue slipping into the cheek. The substitution of “Love” for “Drugs” in Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll was the obvious tip off that Social Distortion circa 2004 was an entirely different animal than they were in their youths. The reference to nursery rhymes in the new album’s title, Team Live Fast, Die Young would sneer, says all that needs to be said about Social D in 2011.
The thing of it is, taken on its own terms, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes is an eminently listenable album filled end-to-end with Social Distortion’s signature punk-blues-honky-tonk sound. Sure, that signature may have a few more curlicues on it than it did when it was carved into a jailhouse wall a few decades ago, but hey, you’re either getting older or you’re dead. Deal with it.
