Green Day
American Idiot
(Reprise)
Arguably the father of modern pop-punk, Green Day is back from a hiatus to produce a solid and surprisingly intelligent album. American Idiot challenges the new age of pop-punk crowds that have only known post-'90s punk (or post-punk) to look deeper than the surface of catchy hooks and power chords.
Musically fresh and powerful, American Idiot is full of new avenues of exploration for a band mostly known for their signature sound. Breaking that rule that dictates songs must not venture over three and a half minutes, Green Day has not one, but two tracks that venture on the verge of being punk symphonies, each lasting over 10 minutes, and having five separate \movements."" Even if Green Day's fame comes from quick, loud and jumbled tracks, Billie Joe's lyrical gamble pays off, and the listener is not bored by what 10 minutes of Green Day's genius can accomplish if left running.
But this is a dark album; you will not find a ""Time of Our Lives"" on American Idiot. These middle-aged and veteran pop-punkers come to the table with a slew of agitations of life that are in dire need of being addressed for all the world to hear, and hopefully learn from.
The title track comes out swinging with its obviously political, well-articulated message against the state of the American sense of right and wrong in this day of violence and war. But while track one catches you with its assault on the current state of America, it's the later songs that are noteworthy. The album continues onward with Billie Joe turning inward and digging deeper than the common song topics of a frustrated punk rocker. He divulges into a spiral of commentary on broken communities and broken lives, loneliness, deaths, anger, self-torture, and an overwhelming sense of darkness as time progresses. Each song is dated next to its handwritten lyrics in the songbook, leaving the listener a chronological path to follow through the darkening thoughts and heavy chord progressions of the record.
But while lyrically the album is a study of what happens when the glitz and novelty of being a rockstar has faded away, musically the album is much lighter. There are many points that give the album life and show the sparks of the band's reinvigorated ingenuity. While American Idiot is still laden with their signature power-chords, cranked-up vocals, and jump-around melodies, Green Day ventures much further than previous albums, and surpasses the competition with their exploration of what punk can be. There are ballads and interludes with gentle acoustic guitars and piano lines popping up from time to time. From parts in ""Jesus of Suburbia"" that draws to mind a barber-shop quartet and a 1950s Main Street, to solos harmonized with only a piano, to the African drumming intro to ""Extraordinary Girl"" Green Day explores above and beyond what is required of a seasoned punk band to sufficiently create a genuinely solid album. In the process Green Day has cemented the reality of their continuing relevance and genius to a genre that is so often brushed off as needing little talent or creativity to master, but with American Idiot it is apparent that talent and creativity is something Green Day obviously still has plenty of.
