Green Day - ¡Uno!
Reprise Records
Out: September 25
Even without hearing a single note of Green Day's trilogy of new albums, it's impossible not to see ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre! as a deliberate return of sorts, beyond even the mid-nineties slob-pop of Dookie and the proto-punk forbearers that inspired it to a gleaming, romanticized golden era of rock 'n' roll—a time and place when bands kicked out a new LP every six months and every song on the radio was two and a half minutes of guitars, cars and girls… not necessarily in that order. A mean dose of wham-bam penance following the opulent operatics of American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown, ¡Uno! feels like the "back to our roots" record Green Day has been threatening to make for a decade plus: a balls-out collection of punk rawkers explicitly designed for hook-ups, rave-ups and shakedowns. It's also, incidentally, the first album they've made since Insomniac that by and large doesn't add anything new to the band's sound, style or ethos.
But who's complaining, right? "Gonna ride the world like a merry-go-round, like a Ferris wheel, like it's breaking down," Billie Joe Armstrong proclaims gleefully over the chugging, tumbling punk rhythms of "Nuclear Family," a fresh breath of "second verse, same as the first" air boasting heavier than hell Mike Dirnt bass chords and the first of several wiry guitar solos by a clearly enlivened frontman. Billie Joe is all over this record (and its post-Jamie Reid cover art, appropriately), whether he's rallying the troops for battle (the mid-'60s The Who nod "Carpe Diem") or asking the hottest misery chick to the prom ("Sweet 16")… raising our voices up ("Fell For You") or telling us to just shut the fuck up ("Let Yourself Go"). Sonically, ¡Uno! doesn't stray far from the promised Foxboro Hot Tubs-covering-Kerplunksound we'd been prepped to expect—similarly paced rockers like the boisterous "Stay The Night," the seething "Loss Of Control" and the "¡Viva la Gloria!" sound-alike "Rusty James" blur together in a seamless, frills-free rock 'n' roll flurry, moving from one "eat, drink and get crazy" anthem to the next with brisk restlessness, as if the "live like there's no tomorrow because there isn't one" message might fall apart past the three minute mark.
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¡Uno! would border on rock-by-numbers were it not for moments like the still-eyebrow-raising "Kill The DJ," a limber, streamlined dance punk anthem fueled by Tre Cool's shimmering disco hi-hats and Armstrong's ghost town saloon guitar fills. It's the closest thing to a "Last Ride In" or "Misery" moment here—the sole reminder that, when they're not in pop-punk assembly line mode, Green Day has gotten pretty good at thinking (and playing) outside the box. Elsewhere, "Oh Love"--the album's lead single and cellphones-in-the-air finale--feels more like an open-ended stopgap than a satisfying climax with its spacious, minimal garage pop guitar strums and midtempo half-measure gallop. That said, it would be counterintuitive to write off ¡Uno! with an easy "well, it's just the first part of a whole" conclusion—it's a fully-formed, substance-over-style, straight up rock 'n' roll firecracker in its own right and some of Green Day's most lively (if not inventive) music in 15 years… more Star Wars than The Fellowship of the Ring, as far as first installments go.
Grade: B+
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