Enema of the State is crazy and a lot of fun

A sort of mediation on a popular culture turning to crazy, set to the sound of electric guitars and heavy, heavy drumming.

☞ by Allen Therisa in Pet Sounds

Enema of the State

blink-182

1999

MCA Records

Crazy. Misplaced. Just plain dumb.

Enema of the State is the musical accompaniment to teen (mostly male) rebellion, running about with its clothes off.

Released at the end of what felt at the time to be the most smothering decade this side of the 1950s (resistance is futile and to be frowned upon, so eat up your dinner and go to bed early), Enema of the State gave the world a sort of buffed-up version of guitarish rebellion with arse-poking overtones. It's an album of jarring and flowing (in equal measure) tracks, glued together with reverb', powered by frustration and inflection of consumer desire.

And all anyone can remember from this album is the digging back to childhood What's My Name Again? and radio-friendly earwig All The Small Things.

All The Small Things, of course, came with one of the greatest MTV videos of all time, which managed to both satirise and praise the media environment that had managed to poison everything around it. As such, only heavy rotation was appropriate for its funny, silly assault on image-inflected music television, and the whistlesome tune that would accompany many journeys to school.

It was rebellious and cuddlesome. Perfect skaterpop, in fact.

The rest of Enema of the State inevitably sits in the shadow of All The Small Things, which is a shame, because under the farty vulgarisms of the remaining ten tracks exists a clever, almost artful construct of tiny tales and big frustrations.

It's a boy's album, sure enough, scratching away at a world that just doesn't matter to the guys doing the scratching, but it's not quite an island of its own. So, hop aboard and enjoy the energetic rants and yearnings evident here built with clever hooks, which soon weave their intoxicating magic on the listener.

Like it or not.

Recent articles: