The Adicts – All The Young Droogs

Counting the re-release of their debut Songs of Praise, All The Young Droogs marks The Adicts’ tenth studio album in a career that has just passed its third decade. For such a band to retread some familiar territory is inevitable, but The Adicts embrace their roots full-throttle. Absent even Life Goes On‘s modest stylistic ambitions All The Young Droogs is a fitting if worn addition to the anachronistically cheery Britpunks’ repertoire.

The opening “Battlefield W1” portends the album’s thoroughly traditional structure, and most of Droogs marches forward to a handful of major chords and a martial beat. Beginning the album with a reference to a particular London postal code probably unfamiliar to those without family in Westminster is an act of pastiche on The Adicts’ part. Their audience extends well beyond the UK – their biggest festival appearances have all been in the U.S., and Americans produced this album – and so “Battlefield W1,” appropriating all manner of faintly political imagery that extends naturally from the battlefield metaphor, feels misplaced. Droogs is mostly a love letter to old friends and its attempts at anything more serious, namely “Battlefield” and later “Rage Is The Rage” amount to wasted space.

The rest of the album is filled with G-rated waxing on bad behavior hinted at by the use of the word “Droog,” and the album is at its best at its most choral. “Wild” and “To Us Tonight” make the best use of lead singer Keith Warren, the former showcasing his notorious punk monotone to beef up a catchy lick, the latter embedding and enhancing it in a backup chorus that compensates for Warren’s limited range.

After 2010’s highly successful Life Goes On departure it’s surprising to hear Warren return to the familiar with such verve. Indeed this all ages-friendly album makes little use of the Clockwork Orange imagery at all. The catchy but tepid “Horrorshow” misreads Anthony Burgess’ adjective, and the eponymous track makes a successful single but is targeted to an audience that may have missed the reference.

Many literary nods are dumped into this album yet combined with the simplistic song structures that prop the whole thing up one can’t help wondering if The Adicts genuinely embrace their foundational style or if they’re just cashing in on a successful formula. Marching into a fourth decade of performing the line between nostalgia and cynical exhaustion has begun to blur.

That this album’s stark rhythms make perfect putty for a talented live act isn’t in question. Doubtless too is the fact that The Adicts have devised a method for producing the perfectly average, the utterly acceptable punk lick. What is in question is whether that’s really what they meant to do.