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Green Day - '21st Century Breakdown' (Warner Brothers) Released 15/05/09

the perfect microcosm of Green Day’s career - brilliant but occasionally flawed...

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For a band in their 22nd year of existence you might think Green Day would be happy collecting their royalty cheques in their retirement home by now. But, of course, this would be ignoring the fact that two decades ago Green Day should have been in school rather than writing pop punk tracks about a girl (see their first LP ‘39/Smooth’).
It’s a triumph for them that they’ve moulded themselves from fresh faced teens to disgruntled young adults and now political freedom fighters all in that time period. Following their 2000 release ‘Warning’ it seemed their time was running out and then of course came their defining moment in 2004 – ‘American Idiot’.
If truth be told their eighth album proper combines the joys of ‘American Idiot’ with the generic failures of ‘Warning’ and thus is stunted in its brilliance. At 69 minutes long it's Green Day’s longest record yet and you can’t help but feel there’s an outstanding 45 minute album in there but nothing more. Sadly it’s a case of mostly killer, some filler.
This is not to take away from the structure which is perfectly put together. '21st Century Breakdown’, ‘Know your Enemy’ and ‘¡Viva La Gloria!’ are the perfect pop punk launching pad while ’21 Guns’,  ‘American Eulogy’ and ‘See the Light’ sign the album off perfectly with the right balance of power ballads and political imagery.
It’s the juxtaposition of brilliance and generic nonsense in the middle which take the momentum from raging torrent to dribbling stream. You won’t hear a more satisfying power punk track than ‘Murder City’ all year and yet its prefixed with the lacklustre ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘Last of the American Girls’. Worst of all is when Green Day go from the sublimely aggressive ‘Horseshoes and Handgrenades’ into the turgid ‘Static Age’ . The former is a Hives inspired rock swagger with Billy Joe screaming “I’m not fucking around!”  while the latter is a pop by numbers slice of rubbish. If he wasn’t fucking around in ‘Horseshoes’ he damn well was in ‘Static Age’.
If Billy, Mike and Tre had a bit more quality control we’d be talking about American Idiot 2, but as it is we’re merely discussing a stop start album which ranks alongside the good (but not amazing) ‘Insomniac’. It’s not an anti climax but it's the perfect microcosm of Green Day’s career - brilliant but occasionally flawed.
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  • Peacemaker is far from lacklusture sire, it's perhaps the best melody on the album. Almost score-like strings and a killer bassline. It's latino fuelled punk and a song that stands apart from the repeat of American Idiot structures/melodies

    ~ by Roger the frog dodger 5/12/2009

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