Elly Roberts reviews
Green Day: American Idiot
Distributed by
Reprise Records
- Released: September 2004
- Rating: 2/10
- Cat.no.: 9362487772
- Warning: Explicit Content (Parental Advisory)
Billie Joe Armstrong (guitar/vocals), Mike Dirnt (bass/vocals) and Tre Cool
(drums/vocals) aka Green Day have had huge success with American Idiot.
Five million sales, seven Grammy nominations and three top five singles (most
recently Boulevard Of Broken Dreams).
So what’s the big fuss? I don’t know really. I’m going to go against all the
plaudits. Firstly,it took four years to come up with the goods. The music ‘journos’
are unanimous in their praise. On first listen they sound like any other current
American outfit. They’re loud and there’s affair share of sloganeering eg.
"Don’t want a nation under the new mania" – American Idiot, along with
other angst ridden and tortured lines.
Singing is average: so what’s new with punksters? Considered a heavyweight
post-Punk band, they’ve gathered a massive following on both side of the pond.
Targetted at the pubescent market,they no doubt feed the hormones. As with
previous punkish outings, the repertoire is predictably one-dimensional and
this is no exception.
There are better bands out there
(Rily Kiley)
doing better things,and moving forwards with out delving into the short shelf-live
of mindless-boogie. Some musical creativity (respite) surfaces with
Boulevard, Homecoming and When September Ends, but that’s it.
Then there’s the trendy expletives, which are unnecessary. Real talent doesn’t
resort to this. Considering the four-year hiatus and all the fuss,this is very
disappointing. Move on lads.
In the final analysis this NOT a classic,and NEVER a masterpiece.
The full list of tracks included are :
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
Review & concert pics copyright © Elly Roberts, 2004-2008.
