Green Day - ¡Uno! (2012)
When Green Day first announced they were doing a trilogy of albums in 2012, I remember thinking "why not just make one REALLY good album and maybe have an album of leftovers, sorta like "Shenanigans" or something?" and of course, that's what they should have done, but here's the thing: They needed a new gimmick because rock-operas weren't cutting it anymore. They needed to be in the news for some reason other than "Green Day just announced their third rock-opera "Boy Likes Girl, Girl Likes Boy, America is a Fucked Up Place to Live" coming this summer" so of course they had to put out a fucking trilogy. I remember catching them performing "Let Yourself Go" live on MTV one morning, listening to the song and thinking "Man, this is stereotypical Green Day... They really have LET THEMSELVES GO, HAHA! Time to post that on my Facebook!! Three fucking likes, here I come!!" but truth be told, I came around on the song and the album in general, but good Lord there's some shit we need to talk about.
Look, throw away your criticisms of "Kill the DJ" as being some Clash ripoff, it doesn't matter, you'd praise the song if it came up by some obscure artist on Pitchfork's BNM, it doesn't matter. What -does- matter is that Green Day retreads so much familiar ground on this album, returning to simple-ish pop-punk and even stealing their own fucking melodies/riffs from just a few years before. "Carpe Diem" is just "Before the Lobotomy", the riff is the exact fucking same, and the vocal melody in "Rusty James" is just the vocal melody to "iViva la Gloria!" and I'll be honest with you: I had given this band a pass before when they had "accidentally" stolen vocal melodies and shit from other bands (except for in the case of "American Idiot" / "Doublewhiskeycokenoice" because that was fucking horseshit) because I hear so much fucking music that whenever I've tried writing songs before, I, once or twice, ended up writing a song that used a similar melody to a song I knew that I didn't even realize I was copying. I understand that, but to effortlessly ripoff your own material from just a few years before is fucking sickening. This isn't some free EP that you could even make the excuse of "eh, it's free": THIS WAS A FUCKING ALBUM YOU HAD TO BUY. To effortlessly repackage your own fucking material as new is so scummy I don't even know where to fucking begin. Fuck you, there's absolutely NO way they didn't know that they were retreading the same ground that those songs previously laid down. I like this band, but I don't listen to them as religiously as other people to realize if they've copied any of their other songs. Wouldn't surprise me, though.
That being said, believe it or not.. I like every song on here to at least some degree, although I do find myself much more partial to the singles, along with "Nuclear Family" and "Stay the Night", the latter of which really should have been a single because it's pretty fuckin' great, but I realized halfway through listening to the album that the reason I found myself liking all of the tracks is because these are really fuckin' accessible Green Day tracks made straight-for-radio, so of COURSE I'd like them, because outside of the whole "two of these songs sound like previous Green Day songs" thing, there's nothing really even mildly offensive or challenging about this music, no matter how many F-bombs they try to insert into the music to nail home the "we're done with rock operas, guys!! we're punk!!" thing that most people don't give a shit about. This album sounds like Green Day meeting up and slamming out an entire album in the course of a weekend as part of some huge garage band jam session, and hey, I like it. I don't think this is -great- per se, but this is exactly what the band needed to do at this point in their career to help change their shit back up from trying to imitate those epic progressive-rock albums they grew up listening to. Somehow, hearing Green Day go back to a few simple power-chords and lyrics that were probably written in five minutes on an iPhone is just fine with me. If you try to hear this album as anything other than Green Day trying (as middle-aged men) to embrace their roots, you're probably gonna have a bad time, but for the rest of us that're overjoyed with Green Day putting away the theatrics for a minute, it's pretty fun while it lasts.
7/10
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Read about this album on Wikipedia! Great stuff to read while on the toilet! Yeah!
