Simple Plan: No Helmets No Pads... Just Balls : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

At a time when Sum 41 are considered transgressive, their fellow Canadians Simple Plan slide undetected into the punk pit. Pierre Bouvier's clipped, nasal singing fits the bill, as do the songs: brief, ephemeral, tautly structured, bombastically produced blasts of snotty posing. But while the boys might be angsty, they're far from alienated. No Pads offers clean, pleasant rebellion that knows nothing of John Ashcroft and everything of Ashanti (and Michelle Branch and Vanessa Carlton). Like the rest of the new-punk brigade, Simple Plan insist on balancing their immaturity with excuses for their immaturity, as on the suggestively titled "I'm Just a Kid" and "God Must Hate Me." Who else could tell an ex, "You don't mean anything to me" one minute and, later on, "I'd run a thousand miles to get you"? Neither, it's clear, is true. He never took her that seriously to begin with.

JON CARAMANICA
(From RS 918, March 20, 2003)