Review: 21st Century Breakdown
Posted: 2009-07-20
The short version: 21st Century Breakdown is what you would get if Warning and American Idiot got wasted at a cheap country bar, fucked, and American Idiot left town on their chopper the next day leavingWarning tearfully waving goodbye in the dust.
The long version:
The year is 2000 Ano Domini. While the popular media and high-school prom planners alike are blowing Green Day from afar for providing their Last Dance/Season Finale tour-du-force in the form of “Good Riddance”, the fans that grew up listening to “Going to Pasalacqua”, “Welcome to Paradise” and “Christie Road” are feeling a little raw in the backside. Yes, Nimrod had some good songs on it, but let’s be real here: Green Day’s running out of steam.
If I could pick one low point in their musical career back then, it would be when I heard “Misery”, “Hold On”, and “Macy’s Day Parade” on Warning. I could deal with one or two “break-the-mold” songs on an album. But three? With a mandolin and acoustic guitar?! (needle scratch) Long gone were the snarky and shallow three-chord wonders we could all belt out on our guitars at home. They were using actual instruments and complex set-pieces. They were growing as a band and furthermore, Billie Joe started experimenting with that 3rd person narrative style and cohesive thematics executed so well on 21st Century Breakdown. That’s right, I said it. Without Warning, there would be no 21st Century Breakdown. So it wasn’t a musical low point after all, but rather an entirely new direction for the band and we were all a bit too short-sighted to notice. Not that I think Billie Joe Armstrong is some kind of master lyricist or super genius who knows the ending to Lost, but I’m betting he knew what direction he was going in with that sound later on. But that’s only half the story. If Warning can be considered 21stCB’s mother, who then is the father? Cue Jerry Springer moment: American Idiot come on out!
This next bit’s a lot easier to write because AI is wiki-wiki, fr-fr-fresh in our minds. So let’s do a quick recap:
- Comes four years after Warning (2004)
- Band’s been in therapy to work out their differences.
- Some jerkoff steals master tapes of their unreleased “meh” album (blessing in disguise).
- They go back to work writing and creating better songs with actual depth and current political tones.
- The new album has a much faster “feel” than their recent work and is more grandiose in scope.
- It totally fucking destroys everyone’s expectations and sells a ho-jillion copies. The world now loves Green Day. Except the Punk community in Berkeley. There’s no pleasing that crowd.
Which brings us to now. The Bush Administration is out and Green Day’s opus isn’t quite as relevant as it was four and a half years ago. Rather than come out with another “the government sucks” album, they dig a little deeper and explore a theme the more rational thinkers among us all knew was coming on November 5th: disillusionment and disappointment in a post-Bush world. If I could give 21st Century Breakdown an alternate title, it’d be Dear Mr. President, Where Are the Blowjobs and Lollipops? But I digress.
21st Century Breakdown’s got the central themes and feeling of American Idiot, but wrapped up in a soft Warning tortilla. The songs themselves are no longer the traditionally simplistic punk stylings Green Day was once known for, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad. If I could find one thing to knock about this new album, it’s that it falls victim to the same problem many of Green Day’s other albums do: slight repetition of a set piece. For example, the slow starts found on "Viva la Gloria" and "Before the Lobotomy" could’ve been better off if those songs weren’t right next to each other. I’m also surprised more reviewers aren’t pointing out the similarities between the verses in the “Mass Hysteria” portion of "American Eulogy" and "Deadbeat Holiday" off of Warning. It’s probably nitpicking to most, but it stands out after the first listen. By stark contrast, letting Mike Dirnt sing on the bridges in “Modern World” is probably the most awesome vocal trick Green Day’s done since Tré sang “Dominated Love Slave” on Kerplunk! If I hadn't bought the Foxboro Hottubs album, I'd have never recognized the voice.
All in all, 21st Century Breakdown makes for a great album that I’m sure will be more popular than Jesus....of Suburbia (quoth the Lennon, “Nevermore!” For fans that jumped on the wagon with American Idiot, Green Day can do no wrong. But for those of us that have been around long enough for the pattern to emerge, it’ll go down in history as one of those albums. You all know what I’m talking about.
B+