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Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown, one of 2009's most-anticipated records, releases in May. Yesterday, reps from the band's label, Warner Bros., swung by SPIN's lower Manhattan office to play us six of the album's 16 tracks and feed us a bucket of fried chicken.
Our verdict? We love it. (The chicken was pretty good, too.)
In the six songs, Green Day keep their punk urgency and lyrical angst, but expand their ambition. They use dramatic musical shifts reminiscent of Queen, and Who-like classic rock guitars. There's even a poignant piano ballad that Fiona Apple could love.
Billie Joe Armstrong's vocals push towards falsetto, adding a new level of emotion to his singing.
And his lyrics mix the political with the social, depicting marginal characters betrayed by church and state. Focusing on greed, corrupted religion, and war, the conceptual album is broken into three parts: Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints, and Horseshoes and Handgrenades.
21st Century Breakdown, the follow-up to 2004's Grammy-winning American Idiot, took Armstrong three years to write. The band has been in the studio with producer Butch Vig (Nirvana, Against Me!) since last fall.
Here are some highlights from the six tracks we heard:
"21st Century Breakdown" Green Day's most epic song yet. With the quiet-verse, loud-chorus dynamics of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," this five-minute cut builds from harpsichord and Edge-like guitar fills to assaultive drums and arena-filling barre chords. Armstrong's lyrics about his peers are as urgent as the music: "My generation is zero / I never made it as a working class hero. Dream America, dream / Scream America, scream."
"Know Your Enemy"
The song's fast pace and feverish guitar make this track sound like an outtake from the Dookie sessions. And Armstrong continues his political screed: "Do you know the enemy / “Silence is the enemy so give me revolution.”
"Before the Lobotomy"
Armstrong sings like you've never heard him before. Strumming an acoustic guitar, he hits all the high notes, as his lyrics lament a character in such pain his "misery [is] drenched in gasoline."
"March of the Dogs"
Handclaps, surf guitar, lyrics about sodomized dogs -- all accompanying a scathing indictment of contemporary religion. Hard and fast from start to finish, this spiky four-and-a-half-minute tune finds Armstrong ranting, "I threw my conscience in the river in the shadow of doubt," referencing the famous Biblical passage, Psalm 23:4, which reads, "I will walk through the valley of the shadow of death... I will fear no evil."
"Restless Heart Syndrome"
Green Day's largest sonic departure yet. With quiet piano and confessional lyrics ("I've got a really bad disease / Its got me on my hands and knees") Armstrong channels Fiona Apple. Until the Linkin Park-style guitars kick in.
"21 Guns"
The catchiest of the new songs. This track covers a lot of territory in its five minutes, from a solo acoustic guitar (reminiscent of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams") to Brian May-worthy electric riffage. But the chorus holds the killer hook, as Armstrong hits never-before-reached highs with his voice in a thrilling moment that reminds us of Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes."
Well done, guys.
http://www.spin.com/articles/first-list … -breakdown
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I was never much of a fan of this band, but this is going to be huge.
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
I was never big on Green Day either, but I did think that American Idiot was just as good as it was huge. So my curiousity of exactly what they're gonna do to follow it is fairly high...
I mean higher than it would have been without American Idiot anyway.
When that first came out I didn't care at all, but a buddy convinced me to give it a listen, and I really liked it.
- Communist China
- Rep: 130
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
Green Day were decent until American Idiot, which had one good song, one truly political song (and it was way off mark) and a ton of anti-American sentiments with nothing backing them up. I will try out the single, but I expect more of the stupid-liberal perspective.
At Green Day's best, Dookie, they were escapism music, pop-punk that was fun even if it had moments of darkness occassionally, now they're dead opposite.
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
Green Day were decent until American Idiot, which had one good song, one truly political song (and it was way off mark) and a ton of anti-American sentiments with nothing backing them up. I will try out the single, but I expect more of the stupid-liberal perspective.
At Green Day's best, Dookie, they were escapism music, pop-punk that was fun even if it had moments of darkness occassionally, now they're dead opposite.
See, I've never been a pop-punk fan, unless you call the Ramones Pop Punk. I think that's why I liked the change on American Idiot, although I think it was fairly slight.
I heard a lot of people bitching that they didn't like it because Green Day was all of a sudden political/or whatever other term you'd use. Fact of the matter is, my politics/social values/etc. are completely different than they were in 1993 too, so I saw where they were coming from I think.
I also saw quite a few people with fit the "anti-American sentiments with nothing backing them up" mold at the time. And even if I didn't, I still don't think I could fault them for suddenly having something to say as they get older instead of churning out the same old shit.
It's exactly the same way as how I feel when I talk to people that wish Metallica had kept putting out thrash metal their entire career
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
I've been a fan of Green Day for a long, long time. To me, their best "punk" album is Insomniac. I like that they've allowed themselves to grow into this matured, Queen-like entity. American Idiot showed they were ready to kick to the curb anyone who cried "sell outs" and really embrace who they wanted to be as a band for the first time since their breakthrough. I'm looking forward to this album.
- Communist China
- Rep: 130
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
jorge, it's partly that they moved on to serious and political subjects, but mostly that they did it so poorly. Reading the lyrics all I felt was that they were the idiots, the only truly political attack they make is on Schwarzenegger and he turned out to be a very progressive governor. The rest is vague, which would be ok if they didn't make the entire image of the album and the band a political one.
And having a live DVD release with British kids singing along the American Idiot is just stupid and wrong, those kids perspectives are not in the vein of the song (unless I'm giving the song too much credit).
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
That might be why we disagree on it then, because I think the fact that it's vague is a positive not a negative. If it was too specific it would get dated to a specific time and place, which it might/probably will anyway. Sorta like trying to watch old Weekend Update/Daily Show sketches it could never have the impact like it would have had at the time.
The way it is though it can still be relevant for someone that picks it up in another time and place (not nesisarily including the title track I suppose)
I also just in general like my lyrics to be vague, if I wanted a straight forward story I'd read a book. I've also thought that many times reading debates here and elsewhere about what certain GNR songs are about. The fact that lyrics can generally have multiple interpretations, therefore impacts is really cool to me. Sorry, I got my point out a while back, and now I'm rambling.
As far as the dvd, I didn't know that, and you're right, it's dumb. Had they done that in America the same thing would have happened with American kids singing along like that, and helped them get the points they were trying to make across in another way.
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
Should they refrain from playing those songs to any of their fans overseas? I get what you guys are saying in theory, but the reality isn't the band going "Hey young Brits, let's all make fun of Americans." It's Green Day playing a pop song, one of its biggest, a song with policital overtones the band believes in, and there being audience participation in the lyrics from their overseas fans. I've heard the argument about that DVD elsewhere. It's a very FOX News argument, meaning it's baseless and only skims the surface of a much larger issue while blissfully ignoring anything that would make the original argument change course. Fucking liberal pinheads! If you don't have the same political leanings yourself, that's understandable, but to assert that the band is somehow propagating an anti-American agenda overseas is laughable and misrepresents the lyrics of the song(s).
Re: First Listen: Green Day's '21st Century Breakdown'
^ I can't speak for CC obviously, but for me I agree wost most of what you said, I just think American kids singing would have been another way for them to make the point of the songs. It's not like the same exact sold out show with the entire audience singing along wouldn't have happened here.
It would in general show how many Americans feel the same way they do (or not, like you said, it is just a pop song) and it would have taken the ammunition away from all the "Fox News arguments".
