Rock
opera? Concept album? Political statement? None of them is an immediately
obvious commercial move or one you would have expected from a band whose
position a decade ago was of thick-eared, over-amped crass kids with a knack for
a catchy tune and an audience of barely legal beer drinkers.
But
Green Day's album is all three: a near-60-minute agitated romp through a
declining America under the leadership of a hardly disguised "American
idiot" president. It's a waning world as reflected in the life of a
character called Jesus of Suburbia and captured in songs that range from
familiar scratchy pop/punk and four-on-the-floor drive to widescreen pop and
even country.
Scared
already? Don't be, for it's often completely enjoyable, as well as being
overbearing at times, leaden at others and overstretching a conceit
(particularly in the five-part Homecoming) once or twice. Like any
self-respecting rock opera, in other words.
Green
Day's Clash fetish was never exactly a secret, so it isn't surprising the spirit
of the greatest of the politico punk (and pop) bands hovers over American
Idiot. Green Day are working from a more limited palette than the Clash,
admittedly, but when they can pull off songs with the hoary titles of Boulevard
of Broken Dreams and Are We the Waiting by tapping into the idea of
the Clash, you have to give them respect.
