Green Day ProfileIf 2004's American Idiot was Green Day's first great album since Dookie ten years prior, the punk rock stalwarts have failed to repeat that success timeline. 21st Century Breakdown matched American Idiot for ambition, if not execution; more recently the trilogy of ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre! was, by Billie Joe Armstrong's own admission, unfocused, and "prolific for the sake of it". By contrast Revolution Radio is solid and concise, but proves that sometimes you really can't teach an old rock dog new tricks.
There is a certain irony in a trio of 40-somethings releasing an album whose title spruiks 'revolution', especially in a genre that historically has been the realm of youthful cynicism and exuberance. Armstrong says the album seeks to grapple with the culture of violence in the US, with blunderbuss single Bang Bang - "I want to be a celebrity martyr ... Daddy's little psycho and Mummy's little soldier" - providing the most strident treatment of the pandemic of mass shootings.
The album plays to band's strengths: survival anthem Still Breathing merges an affective pop melody to ecstatic punk-rock energy; as a hook, "Too scared to dream, but too dumb to die" (Too Dumb To Die) is vintage jokey-cynical Green Day; while the unsettling Troubled Times sees Armstrong at his prophetic best: "What good is love and peace on earth when it's exclusive? Where's the truth in the written word if no one reads it?"
On the whole though, it's pretty paint-by-numbers. Anyone hoping for a late-career classic is bound to be disappointed.
