I’ve disclaimed that this newsletter will sometimes go off piste.
Or more accurately, that I refuse to draw boundaries defining the piste.
Today, I choose to discuss something which is on my radar but may not be on yours, and that’s Green Day’s 14th studio album, Saviors.
If you are a Green Day fan or a supporter of rock and roll or punk rock music, this edition is for you.
If not, your choice to fast forward won’t offend me. Tune in tomorrow for more of your regularly scheduled programming.
This video announced “we’re back, bitches.”
And man, they weren’t kidding.
Most geniuses catch lighting in a bottle once, if they’re lucky and persistent. Green Day had already doubled that with Dookie (1994) and American Idiot (2004).
They can now lay claim to a third masterwork with Saviors, released last Friday after 18 months of trolling and teasing which cemented the band’s “chaotic good” reputation.
Saviors won’t save the world, but it’ll give us a fun distraction while it all burns down. Green Day give us a knowing wink to this effect by nesting the album title in apostrophes, cloaking it in irony in a nod to Bowie’s 1977 “Heroes.”
The message is, we won’t be saved. Or more accurately, the idea that anyone other than us would save us is farcical to begin with.
Green Day have been predicting the end of the world for a while now. Anyone who keeps doing this will eventually be right, and Billie Joe Armstrong obviously thinks we’re getting closer these days. “God Bless the end of times” he muses at one point, later wondering “are we in hell / or is this just a fantasy?”
Distinct from previous stylistic approaches, Green Day aren’t telling a coherent story on Saviors. No characters, no plot. The commentary is rooted in reality rather than metaphor.
But there is a unifying theme, and it’s that “strange days are here to stay,” … societal and political dysfunction are entrenched and beyond rescuing. “Send out an SOS / It’s getting serious.”
The cover art carries a lot of freight actually, a journalist’s snap of youngster Paul Kennedy taken in Belfast during the Troubles. A rock in his hand he clearly intends to throw, a burning wreckage pile behind him. Mirth amid chaos. It’s mayhem personified.
Kennedy seems to say “everything’s fucked … so why not throw this rock? It’ll be fun. And fun is all we have left.”
Green Day echo this call to action. They tell us that in a world going dark, we have to make our own joy … be our own saviors. And what are we saving? Moments. Smiles. Experiences. Human meaning amid a world trying to iron humanity out of us.
The simplicity of the message makes for a lively ride of music. This is easily the best thing they’ve done in 20 years. Though I will say here that 2016’s Revolution Radio stands as one of the more grossly underrated albums of the past few decades.
Green Day are known for political commentary, and there’s certainly a bit of that here. Inequality, demagoguery, and official idiocy are the obvious objects of critiques sharp enough to qualify as punk rock.
Lead single The American Dream is Killing Me is an unsubtle argument that the American way of life isn’t working well for a lot of people. It’s delivered with a pulsating nervousness mimicking the frenetic rhythms of social media.
One Eyed Bastard, while not overtly partisan, certainly seems to be written as a sword for swinging at a political nemesis, gratuitously likening its subject to a penis.
But political salvos aren’t really the point here. In fact, the band sound almost annoyed by the subject, lamenting at how things have only gotten worse the more people have turned to government for solutions.
Echoing their generation, they’ve given up on politics. The game now is to bitch about it while thriving on the ultimate freedom of futility,
The real bite is reserved for social commentary. Living in the 20s is a particularly caustic diatribe, as catchy as it is angry, which perfectly crystallizes the dystopian dysfunction of a culture in collapse. We are the problem with us, they seem to say time and again. And it’s tough to argue.
Armstrong has never brought a more cutting genius to his lyrics than on Saviors.
A small sample of his hilariously punishing prose:
“Kiss me / I’m dead inside”
“Maybe I got terminal vertigo”
“Bankrupt the planet / for assholes in space”
”Grandma’s on the fentanyl now”"
”It’s the return of the blob / Jesus gonna quit his job”
”Everyone’s a victim and it makes me wanna puke”
There’s some grins at nostalgia along the way. Bowie is called out by name, Cobain get a salute with the lyric “stupid and contagious,” and heroes The Who can almost be heard in the coda to Coma City. Oasis also get a send up, with commotion pronounced commo-shyun, while Corvette Summer sounds like Beach Boys infected with rage virus backed by the J. Geils Band.
There’s a distinct 80s throwback feel to the proceedings. The frequent invocation of “strange days” is almost like a thread from Stranger Things woven through. Children of the 80s operate with a fatalistic sensibility. Like the bombs might drop any minute, so YOLO. Green Day share that fractured psyche and they’re letting us hear it. We’re all on the way out, they’re saying; behave accordingly.
The greatest thing about Saviors is you don’t need any of this background to enjoy it. Green Day have put together 15 fantastic songs, with a tight sound reminiscent of their prior efforts, but both more muscular and listenable. They’ve spent five albums experimenting with different innovations, and you can hear the improvement.
The result is something close to perfect rock and roll. Gripping, energetic, sprawling, with Mike Dirnt’s vocal harmonies and Tre Cool’s relentless drums giving Armstrong a foundation to soar with sizzling lyrics and a guitar pedal straight from the early 90s. If your head isn’t vibin’ fore and aft with the beat, it’ll be groovin’ to and fro with the melody.
The two biggest concert bangers are certain to be Bobby Sox, a bouncy, quiet-loud thrasher about the journey of two lovers, and Dilemma, a dead honest and chaotic ode to the highs and lows of addiction and party life. These two are unvarnished Green Day, and Dilemma in particular really shines.
But honestly, the whole damn thing is amazing music about relatable subjects. Love, relationships, heartbreak, life in the madness of the 20s. The album doesn’t have a weakness, save perhaps for its lack of a weakness.
Closer Fancy Sauce, a sprawling, Beatles-infused love letter to reveling in the madness, weaves all the elements together: fun, futility, fuck everything … we’re all gonna die, so do it young, but not today … someday.
If you’re a Green Day fan, get out there and bang your head like it’s 1981.
If not, reconsider. We all need anthems to entertain us during the coming implosion.
Strange days are here again, and it’s getting weirder.
TC writes incessantly about all sorts of things. Last one born and the first one to run, his town was blind from refinery sun.