Here's a story problem for you:

A song on All's new album contains the line "I'm not ready to be 32." If Bill Stevenson, who wrote this song, was born in 1963, then:

a) He's just now getting around to recording a song that was written five years ago
b) He couldn't think of anything that rhymes with "37"
c) He's lying about his age

What does it mean when punks start lying about their age? What does it mean for a founding member of the Descendents to be pushing 40? Can punks have cell phones without selling out? Does anything rhyme with "37"? These questions and many more are tackled on All's latest album, Problematic, recorded nearly twenty years after Milo went to college. As is to be expected, not too many answers are found, but All certainly get points for even daring to address the inherent absurdity of being an aging punk.

Not that nearing the top of the hill has caused any of these guys to consider leaving off the stupid songs about girls-- or worse, the stupid songs about penises. Though, if it helps, the number of stupid penis songs is kept unbelievably to just one, and the number of obvious, outright stupid girl songs isn't that much higher at three. The rest of the album's 18 tracks make a fair crack at subjects like aging (again), nostalgia, materialism and procreation, with each subject handled with All's usual cautious optimism. Even standard punk rock bile-spewing is kept to a minimum, with two lambasts aimed at frankly deserving targets: on the one hand, Colorado's scourge of trust-fund hippies, and on the other, well... Christians.

For the most part, though, Problematic adheres to a pretty high thematic standard, keeping things generally positive but realistically ambiguous. The rhymes are predictably forced, and the actual delivery is often ham-handed, but there's no doubt that All are operating on a much higher conceptual plane than their kid brothers in bands like the cleverly vapid Blink 182 or the downright troglodytic Goldfinger.

There's also very little doubt that All possess the chops to back up such attempts at high- falutin' lyrical content. They may play a certain brand of template punk, but they excel at it. Most songs are your standard four-chorders, but All have a talent for detail and a certain prog flair. These songs are loaded with hidden nuggets, great hooks, and synchronized bass/ guitar riffs fast and complicated enough to make King Crimson jealous.

There are no immediate winners here, though, and there's a surprising lack of the sort of fist- pumping sing-along choruses one hopes for from truly great punk rock. Especially frustrating are the many moments when All get just a bit too ambitious: throwing an extra beat into this or that measure to allow an extra syllable to fit, changing time in a way that never manages to be less than jarring.

Still, props are due to All for staying the punk course, and for modulating it just enough to avoid seeming ridiculous. Nobody likes a sell-out, but nobody likes a 40-year-old who still thinks the word "fuck" is really funny, either. Or, for that matter, some guy dressed as a cop whose goofy publishing company has gotten too big for its britches. With Problematic, All seem to have staked out a defensible middle ground. Here's hoping they die before they get old-- or at least before Bill Stevenson figures out the math.

-Zach Hooker