Rancid sticks to the punk-rock basics

While Green Day has become too big for its britches, Rancid is content with being itself.

Rancid — singers/guitarists Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen, bassist-singer Matt Freeman and new drummer Branden Steineckert (formerly of the Used) — rose to the ranks of punk rock royalty in the ’90s alongside fellow Bay Area punks Green Day.

In a time when Green Day is trying to reinvent the concept album (and should have quit when they were ahead after “American Idiot”), Rancid is still an honest-to-goodness punk band that makes honest-to-goodness punk music over and over again. Nothing more, nothing less. And like all good punk, it swaggers. It stumbles. It spills its guts. It penetrates our soul with no sense of regret, possible repercussions or remorse.

While the musicians may still have dreams of becoming the Clash for the new millennium in the back of their collective heads, Rancid is best when they are being Rancid, and that’s exactly what you get on the band’s first studio album in six years, “Let the Dominoes Fall,” which features 19 piping hot punk rave-ups clocking in at a lean, mean 45 minutes.

Barreling out of the starting gate, “East Bay Night” is an exuberant burst of hometown pride and cocksure attitude that captures Rancid’s punk roots, warts and all. Deeply rooted in the sweat, smells and sounds of old stomping grounds that were the foundations of the band’s formative years, Armstrong growls the rousing mantra, “Hear a punk rock song/And we sing along/Everything gonna be all right.” The number also serves as an homage to the heyday of Armstrong-Freeman’s legendary ska-punk band Operation Ivy, the precursor of Rancid, which broke up in 1989.

“This Place” explores the collapse of working-class in the current economic downslide. Unleashing their inner-Joe Strummers, Armstrong and Frederiksen trade off in-your-face bile directed toward “monster corporations” that they assert have betrayed our country. Whether you agree with Rancid’s politics, it’s hard not to rally behind their shout-along choruses and snarly guitars.

Rancid condones, as well as celebrates, the life of a “robbin’ and ransackin’ ” rascal on “Up to No Good.” Sitting in with Rancid is Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Booker T., who adds incomparable soul to this lively and dynamic ska-punk opus, with his incomparable Hammond B-3 organ playing.

The album’s infectious, frenetic first single, “Last One to Die” is Rancid’s celebration of the longevity and staying power of, you guessed it, Rancid. The song is a combination stinging slap in the face toward detractors who wrote the band off nearly two decades ago and a rousing salute to the fans who stayed with them through thick and thin.

On the Specials-Operation Ivy hybrid “I Ain’t Worried,” the three veteran Rancid members all take a turn with a lead verse (Armstrong, first; Frederiksen, second; and Freeman, third) to show solidarity through the sanctity of music.

“You Want It You Got It” describes an underground utopia where everyone is singing in unison and kicking up a riot. And what better torchbearers to sing about such a heavenly, subversive place than Rancid? Rambunctious, rowdy and rocking with its shout-and-response vocals, roaring guitars and roof-shaking drums, the song captures the camaraderie of the punk spirit, both past and present.

Armstrong shows his punk troubadour ways on the working-class, wanderlust closer, “The Highway.” Zippity-do-da-ing to lively acoustic guitar strums, the seasoned punker reflects on his life, his career and the acquaintances he has made on the road. In the end, Armstrong concludes, “It’s all I’ve ever done, all I’ve ever known. Just wanna play one more show and make some music with my friends.”

Hear! Hear!