Green Day’s “Saviors” ****1/2
I would prefer to not think of Green Day’s 2020 album, “Father of All…” as a colossal, utterly baffling misstep. Sure, the band was also working on fumes on the awkward, repetitive, oddly-compressed, 2016 effort, “Revolution Radio,” but I have a weird theory about their last record. At a mere 26 minutes, “Father of All…” was (I believe to be) the last album in Green Day’s contract with Reprise. Often confounding and sometimes obnoxious, the album read to me like a middle finger goodbye to wrap up a contract. Then again, I might be wrong.
Each of these two records had their standouts. “Revolution Radio” at least ended with the wonderfully uncharacteristically sweet, “Ordinary World.” (The version without Miranda Lambert.) “Father of All…” had “Junkies on a High,” which although it sounded like a retread of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” still had a kick. The reason I think that the latter record might have been a purposeful gutterball is due to the fact that the project before these two albums (the trilogy of “Uno!” “Dos!” and “Tre!”) apparently only supposedly counted as one album on their contract with Reprise, in spite of actually being three albums with 37 songs total. Some might say the band went wrong there, as well. I would disagree. I really like the trilogy and have long viewed (no pun intended) it as a massively misunderstood offering that might have gotten its proper, well-deserved due if it had been instead delivered as ONE release, consisting of two hour-long discs in the mold of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” Listen to the trilogy again. It has a lot of hidden gems.
While the band is still on Reprise now, it seems that they are using their longtime label merely as a distributor, similar to the way latter-day Weezer is currently using the major-label system. Does this seem to affect their fourteenth album, “Saviors?” My god, does it ever! The results sound like a liberated, awakened band, maintaining their stature while still possessing an undercurrent of freedom. If there was more than a whif of disengagement on the last two records, they are committed to their mission once more.
“Saviors” is easily, the most confident, easily digestible offering Green Day has delivered since their 2004 mega-opus “American Idiot.” While opener, “The American Dream is Killing Me,” sounds a bit like a callback to the former album’s title-track, it makes perfect sense as we live in a similarly polarizing political environment. While “American Idiot” worried about the dangers of the jingoistic war-time ethos of George W. Bush’s presidency in a post-9/11 world, more subtly, “Saviors” (in scattered places) sounds like the product of the moment, as we live in a time where science and actual facts are questioned and we brace for the unsettling possibility of incoming fascism. “Look Ma, No Brains!” may at first sound like the kind of teenage rebellion music Green Day have been making for more than thirty years, but upon deeper listen, it is easily a slap at people who thrive on modern idiocy, living in their own misinformed bubbles. Similarly, “Strange Days Are Here to Stay,” defies its sugary, rousing melody by thoroughly describing a deep dystopia. This contrast is nothing new for Green Day. They have long thrived packing dark tales and truths into bright, shiny packages. When Billie Joe Armstrong sings, “Ever since Bowie died, it hasn’t been the same,” it hits hard. The same can be said for “Living in the ‘20s,” which is equally anthemic and cuttingly disheartening.
Even if you don’t connect with the album’s visceral political messaging, this is at its core, one of Green Day’s best and most earworm-heavy records to date. Now in their fifties, they are delivering something that could easily go hand-in-hand next to classics like “Kerplunk,” “Dookie,” “Insomniac,” “Nimrod” and “Warning.” The “Nimrod” comparison seems especially on point, due to this set’s range and melodic elasticity.
“Bobby Sox” sounds like an all-time, rage-along classic and yet the manner in which the lyrics play with concepts of gender and with love and friendship seems lovingly of the moment.
“Goodnight Adeline,” is a punchy power-ballad that works in a similar, arguably more successful vein than previous hit, “21 Guns,” while “Corvette Summer,” with its by-the-numbers lyrics of “Get around. / I can get around. /Drop a bomb on my rock and roll,” still succeeds thanks to its catchy melody and the fact that it seems to winkingly know that it is a stupid rock song…and owns it.
The brutally honest falling off the wagon tale of “Dilemma,” compels with its lack of irony, while also recalling the pop mastery of “Redundant,” while “Suzie Chapstick” is downright beguiling and impressively dense, recalling what secretly may be the band’s best song to date, “Whatsername.” If pushed, sometimes the songs here aren’t as simple as they appear.
“Father to a Son,” is jarringly beautiful, In lesser hands it would run the risk of sounding saccharine.
With a few tweaks, you could imagine the title-track not sounding out of place on Oasis’ “Definitely Maybe.” Even if the lyrics take the concept, too far, this kind of grandiose overstepping sounds purposeful, as if it is delivered with a strong nudge.
A lot has been written and spoken about how the guitar riff in the single, “One Eyed Bastard” sounds like P!nk’s “So What,” and to that I say, yes, they both are working with a similar blues-based down-turning shuffle but P!nk was definitely not the first person to do that. Riffs like that probably go back to the foundation of the blues. Some have often criticized the band for their perceived borrowing of melodic ideas. In places, “One Eyed Bastard,” also vaguely sounds like Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” as well. Frankly, so do a lot of other songs. Crafting earworm pop songs is a delicate art. Some may argue that the fact that the title-track to “Warning” sounds a lot like the Kinks’ “Picture Book,” or that section of “Jesus of Suburbia” sounds a lot like Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69.” While this is true, these songs should be allowed to exist on their own as close cousins but not overt copies. In the years since the atrocious “Blurred Lines” case, which incorrectly confused influence with theft, the industry has been obsessed with the concept of “interpolation.” (This is why for instance, Billy Joel gets a piece of Weezer’s “Beginning of the End,” because a section of it kind of [ just barely] sounds like “For the Longest Time.”) This kind of thinking is litigious thinking is dangerous for any music creation and could eventually mean the end of art. If you only have twelve notes, people are bound to come up with similar patterns, especially when they are trying to stick to the boundaries of cultural acceptance. Odds are, also, the one who will get credit, inevitably borrowed elements from someone else. Art is a continuum and that progression doesn’t happen without some (sometimes liberal) borrowing. The modern concept of “interpolation” is often heavy-handed and toxic, when it should be used to deal with flat-out quotes. Green Day’s strength has always been in molding something new out of elements that are extremely familiar. It is a tight rope to walk, and for the most part, they do it right. That being said, with the notions of nuance slowly fading, this can be an increasingly difficult point to comprehend.
But… I digress…
Going back to the record, itself, by the time you reach the final track, “Fancy Sauce,” it sounds epic! It is as if the band is delivering a near-perfect summary of their career so far. Everything that makes Green Day fantastic is in this song. As punks who were always too pop-fueled to be accepted by the grittier aesthetic lords of the genre, they should be actually be embraced more as kings of power-pop.
When I first saw the album cover to “Saviors,” and learned that it was a photo from the Troubles in Ireland, originally taken by Chris Steele-Perkins, I was initially turned off that the band chose to edit the subject, Paul Kennedy’s face into a smirking smile. After listening to this record, the use of this image no longer comes off as the oblivious cultural recontextualizing that it initially seemed. Instead, it really works and speaks to our times. When you have a burning pile of trash in back of you and you are perhaps dodging cars, what can you do but perhaps grab a rock to throw, hope it makes a difference and smirk and shrug your way along until things improve? Consider “Saviors” to be Green Day’s effectively tossed rock.
Like Foo Fighters and Rancid did on their recent, respective albums, “So Here We Are” and “Tomorrow Never Comes,” on “Saviors,” Green Day strip back down to their essence and reclaim their place. Now that this exists, those last two records will probably only get better because we now will see them as passing, fascinating pit-stops rather than the final destination.
“Saviors” is a bold, effective, strongly pivoting restatement of purpose and a welcome return. It is packed with hits and packed with potential. It is a record that should not be ignored or forgotten. It easily belongs with “Dookie” and “American Idiot,” in the highest tier of their work.
