"Cold Feelings"

Social Distortion
(Epic, 1992)

"Yeah, I got faith," howls Mike Ness, "but sometimes fear just weighs too much." You don't have to be a prison-bound drugstore cowboy to shudder along with the formless dread in Ness's voice, a sense of severe foreboding and doubt that frames punk in a quintessentially '90s ambiguousness: three chords and the weight of the world on your shoulders. Social D wrote lots of songs about fate dealing you low cards and how bad luck is better than no luck at all, but none more harrowing than this one, in which he wrestles fate and faith with his head and his heart but can't shake these chills in the night that "come without a warning and stay too long."

-- Carly Carioli