Texan pop-punk veterans Bowling for Soup are back with their eleventh album, ‘Drunk Dynasty’, and it’s pretty much what you might expect. It’s humorously bittersweet, straight down the middle, well executed no thrills punk-rock, delivered with the class you’d expect from one of the genre’s pioneers.

If it is innovative art rock you are after, you’re in the wrong place, as what you get here is 11 punky pop songs about losers and bad relationships in a language that everyone can easily understand. With lines like “then your boobs come out and suddenly I forget what we were fighting about”, as on ‘Go to Bed Mad’, you know it’s not exactly going to be high maintenance.

Things get off to a bright start with the light-hearted ex-girlfriend pop-punk of ‘She Used To Be Mine’ with its wonderful harmony on “Fuck, fuck it up”. ‘Shit to Do’ follows with more dead pan humour, it’s stupid arse funny and pathetic in equal measure. Things take a slightly more serious turn on ‘Hey Diane’, written about a friend of the band, it retains that off-beat story telling vibe, but with a heavy dose of positivity that really works.

The rest of the album rolls along pleasantly enough; ‘Catalyst’ uses every pop trick in the book, while ‘Don’t Be a Dick’ is a driving punk rocker that offers some good advice to all the twats in the world. ‘Stop Doing That’ showcases some quirky riffing and more on the difficulties of dealing with the opposite sex, as does ‘As Happy As Happy Gets’ with its acoustic summer vibe and the killer hook of “I don’t want you to sleep with him”.

It’s album closer ‘Drinking Beer on a Sunday’, a bluegrass country ditty that inadvertently steals the show with its wistful lyrics and down home vibe rounding it all off in style.

Ok, so we’ve heard it all before and there’s no surprises to be had, but it is good entertainment value and hits the spot.

3.5/5

‘Drunk Dynasty’ by Bowling For Soup is out now.

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Words by Edward Layland (@EdwardLayland)