Some of my best memories of middle school are the bands that got me into music. Sure, I would listen to my father's classic rock and folk music on occasion, but I was just itching to find something of my own.
Green Day was one of those bands. "Dookie," "Insomniac" and even "Nimrod" were three killer albums that so richly defined the beginning stages of my and my friends' adolescence. This was the soundtrack of our apathy, a snotty and defiant call for us to waste our intellectual curiosity and creative minds.
After "Nimrod," most everyone started losing sight of Green Day. At a time when pop punk slid downhill into even more meaningless drive, the band released "Warning" in 2000 with very little response.
"American Idiot" is the band's first album since and instead of a call to nothing, it is more of call to do anything.
The album kicks off strong with the title track. Billy Joe Armstrong rips through the song with fury and meaning while singing, "now everybody do the propaganda and sing along to the age of paranoia don't want to be an American idiot on nation controlled by the media."
The band gives the classic Green Day "f-you" attitude, all the while mixing politics. It's reminiscent of old school English and California punk and sets the tone for the rest of the album.
The band power chords its way through angry tune after angry tune - this is what pop punk is supposed to sound like. Acoustic guitars and saxophones are added to the mix without sounding too out of place. Track 2, "Jesus of Suburbia," and track 12, "Homecoming," are extended songs divided into sets. This just meatens up the album even more, making it one of Green Day's most ambitious releases yet.
"Jesus of Suburbia" is an especially excellent track and gives very cynical message from the point of view of blue collared 20 something Americans in this day and age. Armstrong sings, "I'm the son of rage and love/ the Jesus of suburbia/ from the Bible of 'none of the above'/on a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin/no one ever died for my sins in hell/as far as I can tell/in the land of make believe that don't believe in me."
"American Idiot" has brought me back into the world of Green Day. Though the message isn't exactly about simple and more relaxed times anymore, the band still shows they can make a dent in music and rock with the best of them. Kudos to a band many of us, including myself, wrote off years ago as finished.
