Praising a return to form is, at best, a stinging compliment. It involves recent mistakes, a decline, the waning of youthful inspiration, the price of a long career, perhaps all of them at once. It suggests that the sensible way forward is to turn back. Still, “Saviors,” Green Day’s new album, is a decisive, even overdetermined, return to form.
Since their inception in the late 1980s, Green Day has remained controversial. Billie Joe Armstrong has sung about personal grievances, including struggles with himself, as well as the ways they intersect with broader political currents, most ambitiously on the band's 2004 concept album, “American Idiot,” which later It was adapted into a Broadway musical. .
The band can still cause a stir. In recent years, Armstrong has been performing the song “American Idiot” by changing the line “I'm not part of a southern agenda” to end with “the MAGA agenda.” But when he sang that phrase on television last New Year's Eve, right-wing media seized on the line to make a fuss.
“Salvadores” finds contemporary objectives. It begins with “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” which progresses as Armstrong mocks conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant attitudes, touches on homelessness and real estate exploitation, and declares that, as a nation, “we are not okay.”
On “Living in the '20s,” Armstrong confronts a decade that has brought supermarket shootings and murder hornets, while on the fast-paced “Strange Days Are Here to Stay,” he sings of bleak expectations: “I can't see this ending. well/Now it's too late.”
While Green Day has pushed against power structures, it has honored musicals. With Armstrong on guitar and vocals, Tré Cool on drums and Mike Dirnt on bass, there has always been a virtuoso polish behind Green Day's roar.
Green Day arrived as a proud heir to the fast, hard-hitting, tuneful, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes sincere punk that the Ramones had formulated in the 1970s. As Green Day's catalog grew, it became clearer that the band knew generations well. of guitar bands, from their grunge contemporaries to Van Halen, Cheap Trick, Boston and Aerosmith, passing through Who and the Beatles.
Green Day invariably delivers precisely arranged songs with clear verses, choruses and bridges. Their 1994 album, “Dookie,” with hits like “Basket Case” and “Welcome to Paradise,” heralded the commercial breakthrough of punk-pop that was both strident and brilliant.
“Saviors” trumpets its connections to Green Day’s past. For their international tour this year, which will be joined by bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Hives, Green Day have announced that they will play through “Dookie” and “American Idiot”, coinciding with their 30th and 20th anniversary tour. Green Day made “Saviors” with Rob Cavallo, the co-producer of both albums, who last worked on Green Day's three 2012 album singles, “Uno!”, “Dos!” and “Tré!”
Green Day's most recent albums had strived to be different: louder, muddier, and often pulling out all the stops to simulate lo-fi recordings. “Salvadores,” on the other hand, is openly lavish. The guitars and vocals are multi-layered and the drum sound is gigantic; The orchestral arrangements appear out of nowhere. The band rings out proudly again on songs like the standout track, “Dilemma,” in which Armstrong, who entered rehab after an onstage tirade in 2012, struggles to stay sober. “I don't want to be a walking dead man,” he proclaims over stadium-shaking guitar chords.
“Saviors” revisits the production approach of the so-called “loudness war” of the 1990s and 2000s, when it seemed that studios were seeking to make, as Meat Loaf sang, “everything louder than everything else.” The waveforms of almost all the songs on “Saviors” are measured as what recording engineers call “brickwalled”: brought to a constant, flattened peak. In a playlist paired with tracks that include more highs and lows, that volume is supposed to be exciting. But on a full, relentless 15-track album, it becomes exhausting.
It is perhaps inevitable that on Green Day's fourteenth studio album, some of the songs have rhythms and chord progressions that may seem retreaded. On “Saviors,” the production often struggles to offset familiarity with shock. However, “Father to a Son,” in which an insecure father promises to do the best he can, is unmistakably reminiscent of “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” even with an orchestra that now complements the powerful chords.
In terms of sonic variety, Green Day flaunts its rock erudition. “Bobby Sox” – with Armstrong singing about the home comforts he would offer a girlfriend, boyfriend or best friend – is an absolute homage to the Pixies, exploding from a quiet verse to a raucous chorus. And the depressive but headstrong “Goodnight Adeline” could almost have been an Oasis march.
“Salvadores” does not hide its craftsmanship or its shyness, but they are a means to an end. Green Day is still angry, upset, worried, and not as amused by the state of the world anymore. This time, the band has decided to shout it out.
Green Day
“Saviors”
(Replay/Warner)
