10 Forgotten Punk Albums You Need To Redisover
6. Limp – Pop & Disorderly
Not to be confused with the Bizkit boys who’d take over the rock scene a few years later, Limp were a Bay area three piece who produced some of the finest pop punk at a time when the scene was overflowing with the stuff.
Releasing music on an offshoot of NOFX frontman Fat Mike’s Fat Wreck Chords label, their debut record Pop & Disorderly is very much of a piece with the pop punk scene, but with tunes that are often a lot more ambitious and textured than the works of their contemporaries. “All About Paula” is perhaps the most complex track, with harmonies and varied sections beyond much of the era’s music.
They can be sweetly sentimental on “Ode To Monica”, a swinging mid tempo number laced with that good, sugary ‘90s distortion, or go for broke on the ska-adjacent “Strut”. The musicianship and vocals of Phil Ensor outstrip most of the pop punk also-rans of the time.
They even have time for that most charmingly hoary of genre cliches, the punk cover version, putting their stamp on a breakneck, highly enjoyable version of Lindsay Buckingham’s “Holiday Road”. It’s great, silly fun.