There’s a bit of a misconception about Bowling For Soup outside of their committed fanbase. Maybe it’s their look, the fact that they’re not über (or even always semi) serious, or maybe it’s the ubiquity of several of the tracks from their Drunk Enough To Dance (Jive Records) smash-hit album that littered our music TV lives throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, but BFS are rarely given the credit for their song-writing that several of their contemporaries get. Whether you like it or not ‘The Bitch Song’, ‘Punk Rock 101’, ‘Emily’, ‘1985’ and ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’ are all bonafide bangers, and an integral part of a pop-Punk soundtrack to our lives.

All of which brings us to this celebration of their defining album. Recorded at Brixton Academy, London in 2018 in front of over 4,000 rabid fans, Older, Fatter, Still The Greatest Ever (Brando / Que-so) is the aforementioned Drunk… in full with several classics interspersed to spice up the run-time. It’s a release that showcases the band both in fine fettle performance wise, and sounding like they’re having a grand old-time of it.

While he may self-deprecatingly refer to himself as not being the best singer in the odd lyric or two, Jaret Reddick hits all the notes he needs to (and in the right order) while still adding energy – ‘Punk Rock 101’ is souped up (#SorryNotSorry), and the backing vocals add a Surf Rock touch at regular intervals, and when he steps to the side the gathered worshippers take up the mantle with loud and proud crowd chants particularly strong on ‘Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day’.

The overriding take home from Older, Fatter, Still The Greatest Ever is not how great their big hitters are (and they are), nor how good and energetic they sound for a melodic act a quarter of a century in, nor how this was their biggest headline show and their fans clearly still dig them, but it’s that the songs that aren’t the singles are high quality and are still loved, and rightly so. Their choice to publically not take themselves or life as a band too seriously may cause many to sneer, and I’m not arguing the title is right and they are the greatest ever (sorry guys), but you won’t find many twenty-four song live albums with as many earworms as you will here.

7 / 10

STEVE TOVEY