Jesus Of Suburbia, in fact, would need a full review to itself just to do it a shred of justice. Two minutes in, when it adopts a piano-led melody, I almost fell on my fucking back, blinded once more by those arrangements, those damn tunes, those lyrics, that narrative that says less about the apathy of a nation, as has been suggested, than it does about the jaded individuals who make up those statistics.
"And there's nothing wrong with me,
This is how I'm s'posed to be,
In a land of make-believe,
That don't believe in me."
American Idiot is an angry record, for sure, yet not confrontational in the same way that, say, Brain Stew / Jaded from Insomniac may have appeared. Here, the tunes are as sharp, as catchy as anything from Nimrod, but lyrically, and more specifically, in the manner in which those lyrics are delivered, the thing is fucking raging. Billie Joe Armstrong has never sounded so sarcastic, so defiant, and yet at other times he seems to virtually sigh the lyrics.
Anyone who still, after all this time, equates Green Day with the likes of The Blink 82's or whoever the hell, they need to listen to maybe Boulevard Of Broken Dreams or Are We The Waiting and try to image The Some 41's or Golfing For Soup ever writing anything so spellbinding.
Are We The Waiting in particular is so evocative, so melancholic, that when it eventually reveals itself to be possibly the most beautifully anthemic thing Green Day have ever written, a fella is left with nothing to do but just sit slack-jawed and staring at the speakers.
This isn't hyperbole, folks. These things are genuinely this good.
When I heard lead single (and album opener) American Idiot, I gotta admit I was a little apprehensive. It sounded worryingly close to Green Day-By-Numbers, and shit, man, there's enough Pennywise records for that kinda nonsense. That single, though, is as close to generic as American Idiot the album ever gets. It pushes the goalposts so far back that even if you squint really really hard and bend down and everything, you still won't have a damn clue how any of their peers are ever going to get anywhere fucking near it ever again.
Article comments
1 - Tim Hall
Progressive punk? Who remembers The Damned's "Curtain Call"?
2 - Mark Edward Manning
Duke, thanks for the link, very decent of you. I'll have to return the favor with you someday.
Now then, you're right that there's nothing shocking about a punk band making a political statement - even the Ramones did that - but Green Day is engaging in the foulest, most dangerous area of politics, undermining and questioning the fight against terror, insinuating that whatever disgust and fighting spirit and patriotism that people felt in the aftershocks of Sept. 11 are no longer valid and that the President is a more of a terrorist than Osama. Billie Joe doesn't quite sing as much, but the point is made.
I expected better of these guys, and what a cheap way to revive one's career and get the respect of glue-sniffing 14-year-olds back.
3 - jonny
green where good but american idiot didnt do it for me