Latest Offspring Not Just Kids’ Stuff

Are our worst fears realized? After selling 4 million copies of 1995’s “Smash,” the punk pride of Orange County bolts from indie label Epitaph for corporate pastures and includes on its follow-up album a power ballad that, with glossier production, could pass for Journey!

Ixnay on that line of thought, hombres y mujeres. Neither that song (“Gone Away”) nor anything else on this richly varied and thoroughly smart fourth album is even close to a sellout. Rather, this is a mature, sometimes daring and always enticing effort by a band that consistently offers far more than meets the ear.

Such fist-pumpers as “The Meaning of Life” and “Cool to Hate” ride catchy sounds and themes with an every-one-an-anthem, kids-united posture worthy of Twisted Sister. But, as with the “Smash” hits “Come Out and Play” and “Self Esteem,” within them are subtleties and wit worthy of “The Simpsons.”

And it’s not just kids’ stuff. In “Me & My Old Lady,” which sounds like a Jane’s Addiction tribute with its Perry Farrell-esque yelping and Islamic modalities, singer Dexter Holland casts himself in domestic bliss (fights included) and is scornful of anyone who views his significant other as a “ball and chain.” But in “Gone Away,” Holland and crew, mourning a lost loved one, truly show naked--and tuneful--emotion. Very un-punk . . . and thus the most punk move they could make.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).