Here's the new face of rock & roll!" announces Lars Frederiksen eight songs into Rancid's latest album. It's unclear whether he's being optimistic or facetious: More than anything else, Life Won't Wait evokes the Clash's Sandinista! – but for all the right reasons. It's an exhilarating punk-rock record, one that delves into ska, blues and reggae. In mimicking the Clash circa 1980, Rancid have found the perfect template for growing up as a punk band. On their fourth album, they have taken their hometown politics and signature thrash to a global level.

Rancid – guitarist-vocalist-songwriters Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen, bassist Matt Freeman and drummer Brett Reed – have stayed true to the rebellious spirit of their 1995 breakthrough album,...And Out Came the Wolves. But they've invested that spirit with a new maturity, and the result is the most accomplished and versatile album of their seven-year career. Life Won't Wait replaces breakneck speed with a more exploratory tread. This isn't to say that the album moves slowly. Recorded everywhere from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Jamaica, it spits out twenty-two tracks in just over an hour.

And though the shadow of Sandinista! looms large – the slurring Armstrong even sounds as though he's playing Joe Strummer to Frederiksen's Mick Jones – Rancid have given that album's politics a twenty-year tuneup. Nicaragua is old news; tracks such as "Warsaw" and "New Dress" take a more timely look at capitalism's effect in newly "liberated" Eastern Europe, where aspiring consumers find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go and where a young girl "looking to the West" must dodge gunfire to spend her money on Yankee merchandise. This polemic against Wonder-bread imperialism surfaces again in the title track, a sizzling dance-hall meltdown on which Armstrong and Frederiksen trade rapid-fire anti-establishment raps with Jamaican toaster Buju Banton.

The Rancid rhythm section isn't sleeping, either. Though a song like "Bloodclot" contains classic punk beats and motifs, including a Ramones-like "Hey, ho!" chant – on which Marky Ramone joins the chorus – Life Won't Wait also features a hefty dose of Jamaican syncopation. Balancing punk adrenaline with stoned-rasta vibrations, "Crane Fist" offers the album's most ambitious departure from Rancid's patented hardcore minimalism with sliding samples, rickety-tickety piano and rock-steady, deep-dub production.

The group's evolution on Life Won't Wait occasionally manifests itself in more personal ways. Incredibly, for this band, there are even two love songs. On a gruffly delivered, dangerously sappy ode called "Who Would've Thought," Armstrong ponders, sans irony, "Who would've thought that dreams come true/And who would've thought I ended up with you?" And on "Corazonde Oro," the ur-punk dares to embrace tradition with daydreams of home, hearth and a mythic "girl with a heart of gold" – who, as it turns out, is no myth at all: "Backslide," a blues stomp with a chorus of horns and a classic R&B bass line, describes Armstrong's decision to resettle in L.A. with his real-life bride.

In the context of Life Won't Wait, such paeans to commitment make sweet sense As its title suggests, life – and, by extension, love – has no time for lonely slackers. Even the CD cover features a body in motion, breezing by a static form huddled in a doorway as if to say, "Move your ass, punk. Shake your booty. Don't get left behind." Life Won't Wait is more than just a call to carpe diem – it's reassurance that, in some circles, punk's indie spirit is still alive and kicking. And if Rancid's new face of rock & roll looks suspiciously like the Clash's old one, not to worry. They're just moving through the past on their way to the future. (RS 790-791)

NEVA CHONIN