Review Summary: His name is Billy, and he’s freaking out.
It isn’t hard to hate Green Day and their overreliance on critiquing Bush-era foreign policy. Much like the subject matter, it's easy; platitudes, and some base-level vitriol. It's probably easier considering their place in the pantheon of big, dumb rock bands, in that, to some extent, we almost expect Billie Joe Armstrong to barely rise above informing us that the Iraq War was bad. To us, the critical type, his job isn't to be insightful or otherwise. His job is to make rock music for teenagers in stadiums that nobody cares about. For Green Day, it’s about being a palatable guitar band making palatable guitar music with plenty of faux-angst. It was once charming, considering
Dookie had songs like "Longview" and "When I Come Around" and "Basket Case", and now boring considering
Revolution Radio has songs like "Bang Bang" and "Revolution Radio". In 1994, they stood for nothing in particular and it meant something, whereas now, they say they stand for something but it means nothing. It's about the superficial sounds and the image as much as it is the content of the expression, and
Revolution Radio is, with few exceptions, the pinnacle of a staid, lifeless, manufactured, and intentional blandness.
Revolution Radio, if you care to gaze at what’s under its boring veneer, is quintessential Green Day. It’s got melodies, it’s got power-chords, and it’s got a lot of moralising and sloganeering. On the predictably anthemic title-track, Armstrong implores his audience to, ‘
sing, like a rebel’s lullaby / under the stars and stripes, for the lost souls that were cheated.’ Perceptive stuff. Still, there's some awareness in the vapid musings of an arena rock band. Perhaps most presciently, Armstrong asks on opener "Somewhere Now," '
How [...] a life on the wild side ever get so dull?' That sense of sad self-realisation comes up here and there between rambling diatribes boasting about the power of rock and the evils of capitalism (yawn). Mostly, it sticks to the safe stuff, firmly entrenched in tasteful pop rock fare. Armstrong’s guitars sound far more Boston than they do... well, anything remotely punk. In style, he mimics Foo Fighters' prolonged slide to the middle, without quite as much (what can only be obtusely referred to as) feeling. If there's anything in it, I can't find it; at best, it’s functional. But, generally, post-
American Idiot Green Day has always been happy to occupy this MOR mantle. It's now though that Armstrong should admit that songs like "Youngblood" and "Bouncing Off the Wall", all giddy, mosh-ready whininess, aren't especially becoming. Of course, the other side of this is that we implore Armstrong to revert to juvenilia, and write about teenage woes. Certainly, I'd rather listen to a man in his 40s bang on about neoliberalism than I would a man in his 40s bang on about banging (although just barely). So really, it doesn't matter that anyone with the inclination to read a book could verbalize something like, ‘
I can play the guitar until it hurts like hell,’ (“Forever Now”) because the occasion calls for it.
Most of my writing supposes that Armstrong has any real existential concerns when it comes to Green Day and what his words and actions mean. He doesn't care, and when he titles an album
Revolution Radio, he obviously isn't overly concerned with subtlety or otherwise. What he's concerned with is riffs, hooks, and all the other things that make a rock song agreeable for youngsters tuning left of the dial. Make no mistake,
Revolution Radio is perfectly serviceable music, just as Green Day have been since at least
American Idiot. Nowadays, bleached of their weirdness and sanitized for mass consumption, they muse less on bad breath and casual drug abuse than they do handguns and drone warfare and being old. His name is Billy, and he’s freaking out; is
this what he has to do to put food on his family?
