GenturZine

Track Listing

1. Cokie The Clown
2. Straight Outta Massachusetts
3. Fermented and Flailing
4. Codependence Day
5. My Orphan Year” Acoustic

The thing with Cokie The Clown is that, at first glance, it seems to be the standard biting, cynical self-deprecating NOFX fare that we love them for. And while fans of this will get what they want, there is a lot more, and this little EP, while following the path NOFX has recently begun to travel, may be their deepest most introspective record yet, at least from the perspective of frontman Fat Mike.
After spending years refusing to make videos or give interviews, NOFX has started to lift the veil and offering a glimpse into what goes behind their sarcastic, politically critical front. With Backstage Passport, the band let a camera crew along to see them as they planned and put on a tour, and Coaster started to grant the listener glimpses into the band’s personal workings. Cokie goes one step further, painting in just five songs a more complete picture of Fat Mike than many have ever seen.

The album opens with “Cokie The Clown,” a song that, in concert with the album’s cover art, offers up Fat Mike as a caricature of himself, recast as a drug-addled clown dragging his patrons down with him. It’s followed up with “Straight Outta Massachusetts,” an anecdotal song that relates, in a silly way, Mike’s move from Massachusetts to California as a kid. And the song surrounding the lyrics is top-notch power pop punk.
“Fermented and Flailing” then presents us with a political tune from Mike. It’s standard, in that it’s really good. This band has always been amazing at poking fun of us as a country, with cynical lyrics wrapped in fist pumping choruses, and when Mike paints a bleak picture of the future for our country and tells us “it’s a long way down, the parachutes are gone so grab a smoke,” we have to nod along and smile because, while we know he’s right and that’s depressing, the music is great, and as long as we take the trip together, at least it will be fun.
“Codependence Day” is again bleak, but this time the finger once again points inward, about drug and alcohol dependencies, and creating a holiday to celebrate it.

The EP’s closer is what hammers the portrait of Fat Mike to the wall. On Coaster, the album’s most surprisingly introspective tune was “My Orphan Year,” a song relating the loss of both of his parents in 2006. Cokie finds him revisiting the song, this time playing it alone on an acoustic guitar. In that format, stripped of the noise and the lacquer, the song is even realer, more emotional and more cathartically uncomfortable than it originally was. Unaccompanied, when Mike sings “for once I’m sincere, 2006 – that was my orphan year,” you realize he means it, and the band has decided to let their fans in. At least for a bit.
There’s no telling if the band’s past few releases are the start of general trend of NOFX becoming more open with their work and their lives, or if they’re preparing to drop the curtain again. Either way, I think we can be thankful for the glimpse we’ve seen of this longstanding band so far.
Source : www.punkmusic.about.com