Explanation of ‘Both Sides of the Coin’ Reviews
Heads:
I’m afraid I’ve lost my way. There was a thought I was traveling toward, but it slowly dwindled down to nothing. The doubt descended and the wolves of frustration began to howl. Somewhere, far away, I am reading my perfect review by a warm fire, I think, as I ready my cloak for the wind.
Now in despair, I see the island paragraphs and the white of this unfinished page for what they really are, deformed trees with dead-hand branches, an atramentous sky buzzing with the curses of “Dookie” fans. Ideas trip me like gnarled roots as I try to run from a monstrous truth: I need to begin with this confession.
I’m a Green Day fan, an “American Idiot” defendant. I once said “I don’t know if there are many bands that mean more to mean than Green Day,” and I still believe it.
Viewed in this light, I’m not sure that this review could be deemed “objective” or “unbiased.” The fact is, as unfortunate as it may sound to many of you, “American Idiot” helped get me through the rock ‘n’ roll door. (The first three albums I purchased, after Nirvana’s “Greatest Hits,” were bought in the same school-night mall trip: Green Day’s “American Idiot,” Modest Mouse’s “Good News for People Who Like Bad News” and LostProphets “LostProphets.”)
Although I’m a fan, it’s not to say that I see no faults in their music. After all, I had the misfortune of hearing their last album, and it certainly cast a shadow before I hit play.
For me, even listening to “¡Uno!,” the first of what’s to be a trilogy of records from the NoCal rockers, was a trip into a fairy tale forest. I didn’t know how I would return. The good news? There’s no dungeon at the end like there was with “21st Century Breakdown,” and there’s no rattling the bars and screaming for mercy.
This time, Green Day stopped fucking around and let us step out into their world – one where they allow us to be their guests and cater to our whims. They’re finally letting us come down for supper.
The problem? At first, this Beast is only so charming. The record is a pu-pu platter that tries hard to impress us, as if we were any and every damsel who might wander past their iron gates.
Where was I? Ah yes, let’s skip ahead to the happy ending…
The secret is finally out of the bag: Green Day can still write great songs. Now, long-time fans already know this, but due to the release of a certain bloated 2009 concept album, Green Day is still considered dead to some.
Essentially what we have here is Foxboro Hot Tubs “Foxboro Hot Tubs,” the great ’60s garage rock disc the trio put out under alias before “21st Century Breakdown,” with touches of each Green Day incarnation mixed in. (This collection of 10 simple punk songs made the latter album so hard to swallow and such an overwhelming failure. Instead of this back-to-basics gem, we got “American Idiot 2.”)
I’ll start with what’s great here, and there is some greatness. The standout tracks find Green Day, most notably vocalist Billy Joe Armstrong, adopting their formally snotty sound: “Let Yourself Go,” “Loss of Control” and “Kill the DJ,” the last of which is the album’s best track, and actually a good song.
The band follows his lead. Chunky guitar riffs ride booming drums, and even backup guitarist Jason White gets a chance to pretend he’s one of the team with some simple and satisfying, if a bit vanilla, solos.
But, this isn’t a retro Green Day album, it’s a throw-anything-at-the-wall-affair.
The most offensive tracks, “Sweet 16” being the biggest fart bomb, openly cater to tweens, and “Fell for You” and “Stay the Night” seem to live in this alternate reality of punk nostalgia, a kind of environment meant to soothe retired punk rockers in their minivans.
“I’m a mess and you’re a work of art,” Billy Joe sings on “Stay the Night.” “¡Uno!” wants to be both at the same time. And it’s an inspired attempt, one that many of their peers wouldn’t have the energy or the wherewithal to try.
Just when you think they’re over the hill, they go and find some more road. Let’s hope “Dos” and “Tre” get us out of the forest.
Tails:
When the preliminary reports began rolling in that “¡Uno!” was a return to form, the collective sigh of relief from fans seemed like a fragile, beautiful bubble ready to burst with the click of a button. Even if the good news was coming out the stuffy mothball-mouths at RollingStone, we were ready to believe it.
But, the question no one wanted to ask was: What form would they return to? Would it be the masturbating, too-high-to-care “Dookie” boys? The nuevo-Goth political firebrands of “American Idiot?” The mid-career “Warning”/”Nimrod” boundary-pushers?
The answer, more simply, is all of the above.
This shouldn’t be as surprising as it is, but with “¡Uno!,” Green Day tries on a new hat. They’re acting simply as “entertainers” – those lovable fools that will do anything and everything for an audience that already has expectations. (Think David Lee Roth.)
Listening to new songs like “Loss of Control” and “Carpe Diem” (tunes that try and fail to capture the old magic), you can almost picture Billy Joe and Co. throwing out handfuls of chum to the audience as they bob and mosh like trained porpoises in return.
It sort of has a here’s-your-gruel vibe that’s hard to shake, especially since there are a host of middling pop songs that don’t seem up- or down-tempo – just troubling and boring. The songs “Rusty James,” “Stay the Night,” “Angel Blue,” and “Sweet 16” prove it.
If anything, Green Day has been a band more akin to the elder souls in “Being John Malkovich.” They are rock ‘n roll phantoms that attach to any and all new vessels to survive. This is part of what makes them so “universally” beloved and this is the right word when you’re talking about a band that can sell out four major venues in New England without passing through Boston. But, this sounds like their last incarnation, as if they’ve hit the point where they can’t possibly – or won’t – try to do anything new.
But, hey, even “¡Uno!”s miserable trainwreck of a predecessor, “21st Century Breakdown,” has its fans. (These listeners get the bombastic “The Who” b-side “Oh Love.”) At this point, it’s quite possible to posit that there are some avid Green Day supporters that haven’t heard “Dookie,” “Nimrod” or “Insomniac” in their entirety.
In this light, should one consider “¡Uno!” the third album from New Green Day? I don’t much feel like it, but I can see where younger fans could get behind this disc. It’s a super-sized gallon of ice cream. Yeah, there’s fudge in there, but it’s mostly a whole lot of vanilla.