Review Summary: A lyrical non-event dressed up as a return to form.
What's probably worth noting before you dive into
Revolution Radio is that lead single,
Bang Bang, is absolutely nothing to go by. When you look at the past 8 or so years of
Green Days music,
Bang Bang is a relatively chaotic track that generated substantial interest in the upcoming album - not quite a masterpiece in songwriting, but at least something different and fun. What we get with
Revolution Radio, however, isn't fun at all - it's harrowingly empty.
Following the well documented fall from grace that was the
'Uno, Dos Tre' trilogy of albums,
Green Day this time have tried to leave the gimmicks alone. What's apparent, though is that though just shy of a 45 minute run time,
Revolution Radio has next to nothing to offer. The record barely excites or intrigues, and at times ends up feeling like a re-packaged
Tre. The very fact itself that this record follows that trilogy should be enough to see it through, but it somehow falls even shorter through being insipid and obnoxiously boring.
The opener,
Somewhere Now, sounds like it could sit at home on a
21st Century Breakdown b-side album. As a listener, you just want the first track to just explode from the get go, but it just doesn't. This soft and lifeless approach seems to infect almost every aspect of the record, which is a huge shame.
The few times where this record does liven itself up are welcomed.
Bouncing off the Walls, Bang Bang & Youngblood are the albums more upbeat and colorful moments, and show that
Green Day still have the ability to write those catchy melodies that made their earlier work so enjoyable when they want to. These tracks, though, are dragged down by
Revolution Radios Achilles heel - the criminally terrible lyricism that plagues it beginning to end.
For a band who were so influential in the 90's and early 2000's to write songs as childish and barren as this is almost funny. When we're not singing about the same *** we've been singing about on the last 5 albums (gasoline, the new age, media and grenades), we're singing about 'getting drunk and falling into hedges', and 'being a high school atom bomb'.
Match this lazy songwriting with the yawn invoking ballads that are littered throughout this thing, and it becomes painstakingly obvious that this album has had little care put into it.
Say Goodbye is as repetitive as you can get, and has nothing to say.
Outlaws just chugs along at its own pace, unaware of how bland it actually is.
Ordinary World is a chore to sit though.
All in all,
Revolution Radio is far from what you think you're getting. In a year where all of their pop-punk counterparts have come out with average records, 2016 was the year that
Green Day could have finally regained some traction - failing miserably.
