Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown

Green Day are dead! Long live Green Day!

Gone are the days when you could comfortably compare the pop-punk trio to the likes of Blink-182, New Found Glory or The Offspring. The fun-loving brats of yesteryear with a penchant for faecal-humour now share the same cosmic fate as the subject in discussion: flushed from sight with nothing but a faint aroma of forest-glade fragrance to remind that it ever existed at all.

The Sex Pistols proved that if you aren't willing to reinvent, you eventually become the thing you were rallying against. Safety, comfort and a self-aggrandising pastiche: none of these are qualities which a band seek to possess, at least not artistically. As such, the No-Cal threesome continue the evolution commenced on the politically-charged anthemic classic American Idiot. Back in a time when only the Dixie Chicks were taking politicians to task, they emerged as the newly-discovered voice of a generation. No pressure then.

If Green Day are the voice, then Butch Vig is the megaphone. Taking production duties, the former Nirvana producer and member of Scotto-American stalwarts Garbage is already under fire for joining Rick Rubin (Metallica's "Death Magnetic") in the loudness wars. Placing the songs under a microscope it may appear that Vig has over-clocked the band beyond their means. While good for radio play (songs are louder) it's severely detrimental to an album nearly 70 minutes in length. Whether it be sensitive acoustic-led ballads or biting punk riffs: the distinction fails to resonate since the volume stays relatively constant throughout. True, for a pop-punk band this is not vital, but on songs like "Restless Heart Syndrome" which change abruptly from melodious crooning to cacophonous guitar-noise and then - just as abruptly - back again: any and all impact is lost amidst the ever-surging waveforms. Subjected to over an hour of such decibel-constancy and it all begins to merge into something akin to a drone.

This crisis of diversity is not aided by the band themselves. American Idiot veered from ferocious punk lambastes as the title-track of said album, to the bouncy crowd-pleasers of "Holiday's" ilk right through to the sensitive balladeering of "When September Ends", also taking in the time to experiment in epic multi-song structures and thematically-linked movements; 21st Century Breakdown makes no such effort. The default for the album seems to be mid-tempo crooners with little bite.

Attempts to emulate Queen's penchant for operatics derailed My Chemical Romance with their atrociously pretentious third album The Black Parade. Similar attempts have much the same effect on Green Day, only without imparting the desire to hit them in the face with the first limb you manage to detach from yourself (failing a nearby blunt instrument). Such musical-monotony is more the shame because as regards the themes, narrative, lyricism and topics which pulse through "...Breakdown's" veins, Green Day have never been so vital, so urgent and so timely.

Following a semi-fictitious couple in the post-Bush era the entire album follows their attempts to regain composure in a world shaken by profiteering, warmongering, underhand-capitalism and unaccountable corruption. Lines like "I don't want to lose my sight / I just want to see the light / I need to know what's worth the fight" and "Seasons in a ruin and / This bitter pill is chased with blood / There's fire in my veins / And it's pouring out like a flood" (from "See the Light" and "Christian's Inferno" respectively) discharge the blistering need to temper anger with purpose. To learn from mistakes and not reflex to a retaliatory slant as far removed from reality as the former life was. In short and interpreted form: far-left politics may not be the antidote to far-right politics.

Billie Joe Armstrong's predilection for repeated use of perfect-rhyme (feel free to look it up) may suggest an amateur approach to lyricism, yet his focus on motifs, mantra, allegory and connected, intricate storytelling belies his fiercely intelligent approach to song-writing.

Ultimately though, despite the undeniable strengths of each song when taken individually, 21st Century Breakdown suffers from too monotone a pallette: incapable of sustaining the interest it so clearly deserves over its somewhat unecessarily-long running time.