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All the Best Songs

No Use For A Name
Fat Wreck Chords

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No Use For A Name - All the Best Songs There are few bands who, after 20 years of service to the rock, can boast the sort of workman-like approach to their craft as No Use for a Name. Through a generation, singer/guitarist Tony Sly weathered lineup changes nearly on par with Menudo, drilled through eight studio albums, logged a zillion, give or take, miles on tour and an enjoyed an unflagging devotion to Fat Wreck Chords. All the while his output's stayed, more less, unflaggingly constant: Skate-punk and hardcore tempos, a pair of Marshall-stack guitars and enough pop-punk melodies to help define the genre's mid-'90s explosion of popularity.

If All the Best Songs is a reminder that No Use for a Name's had nearly no use for artistic development over its career, it's also reinforces the notion that the band probably didn't need to fuck with the formula too much. With 24 albums pulled from the band's catalog, and a pair of unreleased efforts ("History Defeats" and "Stunt Double"), All the Best Songs proves that when Sly's songwriting edge was on target, he shot to kill.

Getting rid of some of the band's more questionable material that, admittedly, seemed to turn up with increasing frequency on its middle-years material, All the Best Songs' track listing is a battery of tunes any punk act would love to have on its highlights reel. Sly wraps up tales of broken hearts and confused lovers written with a sensitivity that rarely comes across in pop punk in the roaring guitars and adrenaline-fueled punk that made No Use for a Name easily slide into a scene populated by tough-guy bands like Face to Face and Pennywise ("Soulmate," "International You Day" and "Dumb Reminders"). Sly's been more than just a lonely heart over his career, though, and delivered more than a few reminders that there's more to life than affairs of the heart. "Fatal Flu" rallies every high-school outcast under the notion that there's better days on the other side of graduation, while "Chasing Rainbows" is an even stronger reminder that you have to lay down to be walked on, and "Not Your Savior," perhaps one of Sly's most revealing tunes, struggles with the responsibility cast onto songwriters by teenage fans looking for answers. Sure, there's a few weird moments -- the cruel black-and-white assessment of domestic violence in "Justified Black Eye" is still cringe-worthy after a dozen years -- but Sly's almost always adept at finding the heart of the issue.

If an unfaltering adherence to So-Cal skate-punk sounds dates No Use for a Name (and it does), it also shows that Sly's a master of the style. While so many of his mid-'90s peers now sound stale and out of touch, No Use for a Name proves that when done right, skate-punk sounds are more than just a dated fad.

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All the Best Songs

No Use For A Name Fat Wreck Chords

No Use For A Name
Fat Wreck Chords