The first voice you hear on Sublime’s first record, 1992’s 40oz. to Freedom, belongs to Minutemen’s D. Boon. The last voice you hear on their last record, 1996’s Sublime, belongs to the Beastie Boys’ Ad-Rock. During its brief existence, the Long Beach trio treated squeaky South Bay punk and bratty white-boy hip-hop as the unlikely boundaries of their sampledelic dirtbag reggae. Though the music was caked in a house-party muck of stepped-on pizza, spilled bong water, and wetsuit sand, it was rooted in suffering and addiction—having a real bad time and trying to party through it. Put them on while you crush a case of Modelos at beach volleyball and Sublime sounds like a SoCal idyll, just three cool bros terrorizing the neighborhood. Listen at home and a surprisingly complex band begins to emerge. Singer Bradley Nowell drunk-steered his band through sordid anthems, crashing through references to classic ska and dancehall songs, shouting out Rudimentary Peni and Geto Boys, and re-setting the murder ballads and drug sprees of outlaw country in suburban California. Though they were misunderstood by critics in their time, 40oz. to Freedom and Sublime are smart music for people who make bad decisions. “They were great listeners, too,” Minutemen’s Mike Watt adds in a clip sampled on the first Sublime record in 30 years, Until the Sun Explodes.
Watt is right. If Until the Sun Explodes proves anything—besides the impossibility of replacing one of the most charismatic singers of the ’90s—it’s that Sublime are still great listeners. The problem is, they don’t seem to be listening to anything other than Sublime. Nowell died of a heroin overdose shortly before Sublime’s release, and his son Jakob, who was an infant at the time, now takes over the family business. The reverence with which Jakob approaches his task is impressive and obvious at first listen: He compressed “every chord progression, lyrical theme, sonic texture, and stylistic boundary” his dad laid to tape, according to a recent interview. It is at times unnerving how much he sounds, acts, and writes like Bradley. Not surprisingly, Until the Sun Explodes sounds like a classic Sublime album. But it’s strangely airless and almost distracted; it lacks the hyper-presence of the band’s classic records. Despite the herculean efforts of Nowell, original members Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson, and producer Jon Joseph, listening to Until the Sun Explodes feels like scraping up the resin left behind by OG Sublime in the hopes of getting high. You may feel it a bit, but it’s largely cashed.
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As the new frontman of a beloved band whose identity was almost entirely built around and by its one missing member, Jakob Nowell is in a situation that would be difficult for anyone—spare a thought for Rome. But by taking on his father’s former role, Nowell has put himself in an impossible position. Had Bradley survived, it’s not hard to imagine the band’s music expanding to incorporate calypso or palm wine, snaking out into Afrobeat, or forcing a little wub-wub into their rub-a-dub. Until the Sun Explodes doesn’t expand the definition of what a Sublime record can sound like, which may appease longtime devotees who can’t stomach the idea of hearing someone like 100 gecs on a Sublime track. Instead, Nowell roots the band’s sound in the mid-’90s and keeps his vocal mannerisms as close to Bradley’s as possible. Hear how he slides from the bear-hug gregariousness of “Ensenada”’s verses into the soft soul of its chorus; only two artists have ever been able to draw pathos from a line like “I just want to make love to a whore,” and both of them have fronted Sublime.
