Green Day's new 'Idiot' rocks

By Sean Daly
Washington Post

Get the mop ready: "American Idiot," the much-anticipated pop-punk opera from influential troublemakers Green Day, is going to make dozens of spiky-haired heads explode. We're talking full-on melon kerplooeys for the poor dudes in Good Charlotte, Sum 41 and all the other faster-faster-hook-hook copycats who have relied on the Berkeley trio's albums as how-to-thrash guides.

Trying to ape this one is gonna cause serious brain pain for the lesser talents — and probably a lot of really bad music as well.

"American Idiot," Green Day's first album in four years, is certainly no "Dookie," the band's 1994 three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-angst debut. It's more like a hyper-stylized short story set to music, a wild scrum of their own influences: the playfulness of the Ramones and the pomposity of Queen, the rage of the Sex Pistols and the pop of the Beatles. It manages to sound just like — and then nothing like — the Green Day that's sold millions of albums over the past 10 years. In some places, it's too clever for its own good; in others, too silly when it's trying to be deep. That said, it's often smart, fun and thoroughly rockin'.

Singer Billie Joe Armstrong, drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt — now in their thirties — have always managed to stay ahead of the pack. There's a clever method to the madness, and it starts with those sugar-smacked melodies buried not so deep under bleeding walls of guitar, the ferocious beats and the sinister bass lines.

That melody-making is still on display here. "American Idiot" kicks off with the title track, a radio-ready burner that bops along on a seemingly playful blitzkrieg beat. Armstrong still sings like a snotty little bugger, bending words with an exaggerated snarl. But now his lyrics — and this is very much his album — have more weight: "I'm not part of a redneck agenda/ Now everybody do the Propaganda!/ And sing along to the age of paranoia."

That song is the Green Day you remember, but don't get too comfortable. The rest of the album tells the long, loopy story of a possibly schizophrenic teen-ager named Jimmy (or is it two teenagers with religious delusions?), raised on soda pop and Ritalin, who learns life's lessons in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

The best track is the beautiful bummer of a ballad "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Armstrong bids adieu to his younger days, and he's so good at making you feel sad, it's a relief when the drums and power chords kick in to cheer the thing up a little. The song proves that Green Day, on the wrong side of 30, can still deliver better than any of its younger pop-punk brethren.