Lighten Up starts in a deeply political direction, angry at the state and its machines. To stare at the systems in place and, with your fist tightly clenched, resist them as harshly as you can. The rest of the album continues in this trend, rollicking between deeply personal moments of self-examination and the feminist punk rock Bad Cop Bad Cop got famous for. The theme of internal strife runs through it, from drug abuse and recovery in “Straight Out of Detox” to anti-ICE and anti-Trump sentiment in “Human is Human.”
Overall BCBC has had one sound throughout their discography, and this album continues that sound. Bass, guitar, drums, and a female vocal lead. Reminiscent of an early Offspring album, the sound is fairly consistent with each of their previosu albums, even down to the progression of the songs within the album. Four strong, two soft, four strong again. The cyclical nature of their work seems to be continued from album to album and that cycle hasn’t changed at all with Lighten Up.
In isolation the album is wonderful–pure punk rock goodness, wonderful bass lines and tight solos (the guitar solo at the end of “I4NI” comes to mind.) But the entire album feels almost exactly the same as every album they’ve already put out. The lead singles were an indication of this, with the aforementioned “I4NI,” “Strugglinh,” and “All Together Now” providing an exact sample of what nearly every song on the album will sound like. That’s not to say the album isn’t good, and it doesn’t make its messages heard. It just sounds like every other album put out by BCBC in the past ten years, and while that sound is good, if you’re looking for something a bit more substantial, I would look elsewhere.