Billie Joe Armstrong once announced in an interview that his band would never “do a Neil Young”. His meaning was clear. Unlike all the toothless ex-punks and bloated superstars who littered the music business, Green Day would never surrender their distortion pedals or rework their hits on acoustic guitars for the benefit of a cross-legged audience. Whatever Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool had become in the aftermath of 1994’s Dookie – millionaires, celebrities, fathers – they were still punks on vinyl. Smack-in-the-face songs, power chords and bleeding ears remained the band’s calling cards, and they had no desire to change that.
Until the release of Nimrod in 1997, Armstrong was true to his word. If anything Green Day seemed to be getting harder and heavier, with hits such as Brain Stew and Geek Stink Breath (taken from 1995’s Insomniac) trading in bad-tempered guitars and morbid lyrics. So it came as a real surprise when the GD faithful reached the 17th track of the new album, only to be confronted with delicate work of acoustic picking and swooping strings.
