Tits-and-pizza punk

After 13 years and two EPs, the wait is almost over. The O’Mulligans will finally release its first full-length album on Friday. It’s called meh.

“We want to be the ones to say it before you can,” said bassist-vocalist Jeff Florence.

Self-deprecating humor is ingrained in the Sacramento pop-punk trio’s personality, and they learned early on not to take themselves too seriously. Florence and his bandmates, guitarist-vocalist David Lindsay (full disclosure: Lindsay works in sales at SN&R) and drummer Mike Luna, formed the O’Mulligans in 2003, as a high school “Oi” punk group—thus the Irish-sounding name.

“We wrote a couple of songs and were just like, ’Damn, we suck at this,’” Lindsay said. “So we started writing goofier songs instead.”

They disbanded after high school and reformed in 2011. They’ve since made a swift mark on the local scene, playing Concerts in the Park last summer and opening for punk legends the Queers last March.

The LP is essentially a greatest hits from their backlog of unreleased material. The pre-release track “Textual Criticism” is a thrashy alt-rock tune about hypocrisy in biblical scripture, a little heavier than the group’s usual combination of juvenile humor and ’90s suburban pop punk reminiscent of Green Day, the Offspring and Jimmy Eat World.

Take “Sweet Barista Girl,” for example, off their 2014 EP, Hot & Ready. The love-sick, Blink 182-spirited song introspects a shy guy’s crush on a girl who works at a coffee shop, laced with lyrical innuendo in the prechorus: “But she barely knows my name, and I feel too ashamed / to tell her how much it means, when she grinds my beans.” The song “Show Them” is a little more straightforward, “them” being “your tits.”

Then there’s the infamous “Pizza Night,” also on Hot & Ready, a brisk anthem dedicated to their love for “New York-style, Chicago deep dish, or Little Caesars, cuz it’s cheap,” as the song goes. The best part: The opening hook blasts, polka-like, to the chant “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” The song’s chaotic vibe mimics an impatiently hungry herd of 9-year-olds stimulated by the arrival of fresh slices.

It’s the closest thing they have to a hit, they say. Kids love it live, and it was featured as the opening theme for a Chicago YouTube pizza critic named “Son of a Pizza Man.”

“They always say, in every joke there’s a kernel of truth, and in every truth there’s a joke somewhere.” Florence said. “So, we write about what we know: pizza, tits and making dumb mistakes in relationships.”

But not everyone gets it. In fact, they stopped performing their homage and parody of gangsta’ rap, “Runnin’ This Game,” after some took offense.

“They may not get that we’re joking,” Lindsay said. “We’ve learned to figure out the crowd a little better, so maybe we don’t get to play certain songs because it’s a different audience.”

After meh, the band wants to release an EP of minute-long songs called Done in 60 Seconds. Florence said they still use the same rule of thumb when writing funny songs, even if sometimes the joke is best understood among three close friends: “It’s got to make us laugh our asses off, and we still have to be laughing about it the next day.”