Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown

By: Dennis Cook

Let’s cut to the chase: This is a good album. As far pop-punk goes, Green Day are amongst the best that’s been, growing into a U.S. answer to The Jam with their two most recent albums and borrowing more than a few choice moves from Stiff Little Fingers and early U2 to further bolster their stadium ready sound. Well dressed, snot-nosed rapscallions, Green Day pumps out lightly rebellious music that can’t resist radio hooks and Journey-worthy ballads.

Cranking 21st Century Breakdown (released May 15 on Reprise) it’s impossible not to think of the seas of cell phones held aloft and young, yearning voices that will join every number as they fill up amphitheatres even in a shitty economy. People, especially teens, will always have fine reasons to be pissed off, full of juicy rationalizations for spitting in authority’s eye. And we’ll always need songs like “Know Your Enemy” to roar right after we punch out and gather some distance from the grind of orders and obligations. There’s an overarching storyline here (thanks, Pete Townshend..this sort of thing is your fault) but it hardly matters. What does are the 18 pretty damn good, varied tunes that veer from fast, pumping snarl to Freddie Mercury-waving-a-hankie weepiness. Billie Joe Armstrong is a great singer – far and away one of the most flexible and forceful in the mainstream and a decent competitor for punk’s reigning title holder, Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin – and the rest of the guys are never less than tight and sharp. The words are smart but not too smart – Green Day gets that universality lies in “We Will Rock You” simplicity – and the whole shebang, full of strings and king size arrangements, just works on a lot of levels.

Truth be told, I’ll probably throw this on more often than some of the artier, cooler things I’ve come across in 2009, perhaps only because it seems to delight my two-year-old son, who dances like a monkey buzzing on Pop Rocks when this spins. I’ll take him being into this over anything Miley or Jonas-like any freakin’ day, and by the time he’s old enough to start bugging me for Green Day tickets they’ll have fully completed their transformation into the equivalent of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for his generation and the one just before him.

JamBase | Jade
Go See Live Music!