OK, let's be honest about this: Over the course of its 25-year career, NOFX hasn't really been too eager to stretch its sound out, explore new frontiers or push the envelope. We've seen snotty punk. We've seen a bit of ska-punk. We've seen pretty much everything NOFX has to offer wrapped up in a pair of short sentences.

If its instrumental abilities flat-lined somewhere around album three, NOFX has been anything but steadfast in its lyrics, showing a versatility that's all too often lost in the shadows of the band's brazen punk attitude and three-chord foundations. Sure, we know about NOFX the skate-punk smartasses, and NOFX the purveyors of chemically based recreational activities. By now, we're all familiar with NOFX the aspiring political punk activists. If you've been paying attention, you might even be aware of NOFX the social commentators (The Decline EP) and, if you're really connecting the dots, there are even a few hints of NOFX the honest and sincere songwriters. All of NOFX's split personalities come into play on its latest, the Cokie the Clown EP.

Released as a pair of 7-inch singles and collected onto a five-cut EP, the tunes on Cokie run the NOFX gamut. The title track opens the set with a nod at typical drugs-and-humor NOFX, in a tale of bassist Fat Mike Burkett's whimsical alter ego, a greasepaint-decked merry prankster who spritzes a trademark blend of white powders out of his lapel flower. Then there's "Straight Outta Massachusetts," a rather throwaway cut that's built around a single-lyric reveal at the end that's not nearly funny enough to endure the B-side treatment. "Fermented and Flailing," taps into the same spirit as The Decline and some of the act's more recent politically conscious material, with a tune that centers on America-the-fallen-empire themes, while "Codependence Day," puts a booze-and-pills twist on pop psychology that's a lot more clever than it appears on its surface. An acoustic version of "My Orphan Year," which appeared in its full-band version on this year's Coaster (review) (Fat); the acoustic treatment makes the tale of parents' death and childhood fears all the more poignant -- and should prove, once and for all, that Fat Mike can write a heck of a song when he puts his heart into it.

As much as we'd like to parse out each one of NOFX's personalities -- the drug-abusers, the smart-asses, the raging lefties, the sincere dropouts -- into separate compartments, they're all part of the same band. Cokie the Clown shows how well those personalities can coexist on a single album. NOFX might not have done much to expand its sound over the years, but it sure has a wide repertoire.