.Green Day

21st Century Breakdown

If anyone had suggested, circa Dookie fifteen years ago, that
Green Day would one day carry the torch for the classic rock opera …
well, no one would have. But now the band who sang, on that album,
Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and
everything all at once?
have plenty to say — about
everything.

21st Century Breakdown not only picks up where the
mega-selling American Idiot left off, it ups the ante with one
broad-stroke proclamation after the next. In other words, a full-blown
Statement. Populated with catch phrases (I don’t want to live in the
modern world,
desperate, but not helpless), the narrative
tracks two well-intentioned but beaten-down souls, Christian and
Gloria, who are bitterly adrift in the post-Bush malaise that a naive,
easily manipulated America brought upon itself.

Every track is an anthem, but Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and
Tré Cool, periodically augmented by pianist Jason Freese and
produced by Butch Vig, steer clear of excess and cliché as they
navigate their tale, which is divvied into three acts. It could have
easily gone any of several wrong ways, but Green Day’s punk has long
since been tempered with pop’s most attractive attributes, and 21st
Century Breakdown
, like its predecessor, is unapologetically
accessible and relentlessly exhilarating. Classic-rock references
abound, and that’s no doubt deliberate: in a musical climate so driven
by disposability, Green Day still believe in making records that define
their era. And they’ve made another one. (Reprise)

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