Descendents: Cool To Be You : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"Don't got no biceps/don't got no pecs/But I'll read you under the table with my thick specs!" Geek-punk legends the Descendents are back with their first studio effort in eight years. Their simple pop-punk sound may have been worn out by generations of lesser descendants -- from Blink-182 to Good Charlotte -- but who among those newer bands would even consider redoing the Germs' nihilistic "We Must Bleed" as an ode to academic striving with the lyric "We must read"? If the sound hasn't changed much, the Descendents mostly abandon the high school angst of their heyday and keep it real (complaining, "Punk rock won't pay the bills") with adult songs about divorce, dead parents and bitching about living a "Walter Mitty Life." Cool to Be You proves the Descendents had a point when they titled their 1985 release I Don't Want to Grow Up.