After 2020’s Father of All Motherfuckers bucked expectations to impressive effect by ditching the politics and most of their punk trappings for more of a garage-rock style, Green Day’s 14th album finds them reverting to type. From the opening The American Dream Is Killing Me in, there’s a sense of weary resignation, the lyrics frequently painting a bleak portrait of contemporary US life, from “People on the street/ Unemployed and obsolete” to “Grandma’s on the fentanyl now”. Although given that frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has had four years in which to write these words, you can’t help but feel that there is room for improvement in lines such as “All the madmen going mental” and “She is a cold war in my head and I am East Berlin”.
With the involvement of co-producer Rob Cavallo, who also worked on career highs Dookie (1994) and American Idiot (2004), it’s perhaps no huge surprise that there are echoes of those two records. But although the likes of the punchy 1981 and the poppier Suzie Chapstick roll back the years, too many of the songs here sound laboured and/or pedestrian, and there’s a real paucity of memorable material.
