If only for the sheer mass of cultural pressure administered by women in their 20s or 30s craving more music to drive to prom to, Green Day has released a record that sounds like it could be by Fall out Boy. Gone are all of the stylistic flares and forays that made Father of All… interesting: the bizarre auto-tune pop nugget “Oh Yeah!” that seemed to work out of freshness for its sheer deviation from the band’s norm, the twisted, homicidal rockabilly swagger of “Stab You in the Heart” and the dangerous grunge dirge “Junkies on a High”; which operated at a very dangerous level of addiction and loss of control.
This new album Saviors, while, admittedly, having a pretty da** funny cover, sounds like a case of Billie Joe Armstrong going to a seminar on how to write a pop-punk song, instead of just sticking to his guns, seeing as he’s a main progenitor of the genre. Is it possible that Green Day needs more money, in this day and age? Well, from what I hear, everyone in San Francisco needs more money — even this beer buyer at Whole Foods I talked to who was living with five roommates in Twin Peaks couldn’t afford it.
So, ironically, here is Green Day, studying up on how to be “cool” like a washed-up uncle, flinging out this half-hearted album of “rock” and “punk” that’s so corny at this point I feel like I need to hold up a lighter to it when I listen to it. Armstrong’s disposition is “edgy” and “cool”; in a really fake, teenager-y way, in stark contrast to the surreal obfuscation in his voice in “I Was a Teenage Teenager” and the nerdy, homicidal mania of “Stab You in the Heart”; two standouts on Father of All... I didn’t review Saviors because I couldn’t even get through a single whole track on it and no it’s not as bad as Gigaton, since Armstrong’s complete fakery is at least cloaked in enough rapid pace and stylistic gimick to successfully conceal itself. And, really, nobody should be surprised that we got this Velveeta-cheese, pre-packaged incarnation of this band at this point, especially anyone who knows how awful people’s juke box selections are in places like my hometown of South Bend, Indiana. It’s style over substance all the way, folks, and at least we can POSE like we’re cool, in sunglasses at night, in or out of our caskets.
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