Album review: Green Day: '21st Century Breakdown'

GREEN DAY: '21st Century Breakdown' (Reprise)

‘American Idiot’ part two? Well, yeah, pretty much. Green Day’s latest magnum opus, their eighteen track, three act, extravagant rock opera, follows directly on from where their seventh LP left off, taking the state of the globe as its chief concern this time, rather than that of a single nation, and telling it through the eyes of two protagonists, Christian and Gloria, whose antics are not entirely dissimilar to those of our friends St Jimmy, Whatsername and the Jesus of Suburbia. ‘21st Century Breakdown’ is every bit the concept album, telling a story equally as vivid and enticing as the one immortalised by its predecessor. So why, then, does it seem like everyone and their mum is baying for Billie Joe, Mike and Tre’s blood? What have they supposedly done wrong?

Well, there’s that leadoff single for one. The Zeitgeist doesn’t approve of ‘Know Your Enemy’, with its two chord simplicity and generous helping of ‘oh way oh way’s. Somehow, some way, it just isn’t ‘punk’ enough for the purists, crossing the line into the sort of ‘pop’ territory coveted by your Fall Out Boys and your My Chemical Romances, you know, all the big name bands that it is no longer cool to admit to liking. It’s ridiculous really, as Green Day ceased being properly punk around about the release of ‘Warning’ – which, funnily enough, garnered a similar backlash for its ‘softer’ sensibility and, hah, ‘poppy’ comeback single, ‘Minority’ (now considered a classic, by the way) – and even before that, they have always embraced accessibility. 1994’s ‘Dookie’, the yardstick against which all Green Day records shall be judged, annoyingly, is absolutely rife with killer hooks and chart-busting melodies. Just look at ‘When I Come Around’, for God’s sake. Strong contender for catchiest tune on the planet, but because it isn’t bolstered with instruments outside of the standard three-piece guitar-bass-drums set-up, or littered with political references, it gets a pass.

Not so ‘21st Century Breakdown’. No, this album is ‘overblown’; the California boys have betrayed their roots! Bollocks. It may be one or two tracks too long, but the range of stylistic experimentation is what gives the record its edge. Oh sure, it’s hardly The Arcade Fire; Green Day are never going to abandon the three chord thrashathon for good, it’s in their blood after all, but at least they bother to try something different, to not remain perpetually stuck in the past. The piano-led fifty six second intro, ‘Song of the Century’, is a wonderfully melancholic piece that resonates throughout the album, appearing again prior to the blistering, U-turn filled whirlwind of ‘American Eulogy’, haunting the listener with its eerily bleak message. The title track is similarly unusual, building from piano to slow-moving rock behemoth before finally morphing into a head-down, peddle-to-the-metal burst of relentless punk energy. The moment when the pace cranks up twenty notches is absolutely spine tingling, a real adrenalin rush for the senses. And there’s plenty of this elsewhere too, particularly in the riotous third act, in which ‘Horseshoes and Handgrenades’ and ‘Static Age’ duke it out to claim the title of most hyperbolic musical suckerpunch in history. ‘Murder City’, the most traditional Green Day song on the record, is similarly visceral, while ‘Christian’s Inferno’ is punk’s hell spawn, spitting fire and brimstone all over your sorry carcass with the most delectably reckless abandon.

There’s time for shameless fun too: ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘¡Viva La Gloria!’ are sister songs, united by their Spanishness. They share the same irresistibly skankalicious beat, begging you to start flailing around your room like a maniac. And then we have ’21 Guns’ and ‘Last Night on Earth’, the album’s ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ and ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’, rock ballads so over-the-top, they’d even give Whitesnake goose bumps. The former is the next single and is the better of the two, conveying a sort of embittered defeatism with luscious extravagance, while the latter veers a little too far into the realm of the cheesy, sounding like it wouldn’t be out of place as the crescendo to an 80s teen romance movie, but, to be honest, it makes complete sense. This is hardly an album of restraint; it’s as over-the-top a piece of theatre as you can possibly get, and if they’d made a ‘Good Riddance’ instead, it would’ve seemed completely out of the place, out of context with its surroundings.

Rather than shouting “sell outs!” and berating the supposed loss of their ‘punk roots’, we should be commending Green Day for refusing to stick to their guns. Yes, ‘21st Century Breakdown’ borrows from ‘American Idiot’ but hell, it borrows from many of their other albums too, with a whiff of ‘Misery’ here and a dash of ‘When I Come Around’ there. The band can’t escape their past, and they shouldn’t try to; instead, they should embrace it and see where it takes them now, as thirtysomethings who have come a long way from writing songs about masturbation. To expect another ‘Dookie’ or ‘Insomniac’ is naïve and pointless; what we have instead is the sound of a band willing to push the boat out, to be playful and experimental, while still retaining the essence of what makes them great. This is a daft, over-the-top, camp-as-fuck, practically insane piece of pop, rock and punk indulgence that worms its way into your skull and sets up home, refusing to leave until you acknowledge its brilliance. At times, yes, there are missteps but, on the whole, ‘21st Century Breakdown’ is a valiant effort. Unashamedly entryist, fabulously adolescent and thrilling as fuck. (8.5/10)