Back a couple months ago during our “Threesomes” week I informed our readers about Green Day’s plans to release three complete albums, each about two months apart. Well the world has received the first of these, aptly titled UNO!
UNO! brings us a dozen new melodic three chord radio friendly “powerpoppunk” songs. To call Green Day a PUNK band at this point would be like calling Bon Jovi a heavy metal band. They indeed were heavily influenced by the punk scene, but Billie Joe and the boys have become part of American culture by writing hook laden tunes that are in a word “FUN!”
When I discovered the band after “Dookie” broke, I loved how much fun this band was. High energy and songs to scream along with. Green Day became an instant favourite of mine. Nothing in the world like playing my bass guitar to “American Idiot” rocking out in my living room.
This time Green Day has steered away from the last two “concept” albums, the band simply seems to have just written some songs and a lot of them because they filled up three albums worth. UNO! opens with “Nuclear Family” a raucous rocker that would be at home on American Idiot. Easy to hear the Ramones influence in this track and it gets the album off and running. Funny how the Ramones who wrote easy and fun radio friendly punk songs are considered “legends” yet Green Day often catch flack for the same formula.
Does Green Day break any new ground with this release? Probably not, but what they do is serve up another round of solid and FUN (there’s that word again!) Green Day songs, custom made for air guitars everywhere. From the catchy “Let Yourself Go”, the mischievous “Troublemaker” and the beautiful first single “Oh Love” all the songs are catchy enough to be singles and rocking enough to go over great live. One song in particular made me laugh and I totally disagree with a review I read earlier on the new album. “Kill the DJ” is probably the most fun song on the album, many times I have shared Billie’s sentiments to kill the fucking DJ!
If you love Green Day, you will probably love the new album. If you hate Green Day, it will do nothing to change your mind. That said there isn’t a band out there that does it any better than Billie, Mike and Tres. It’s great to hear a band playing instruments, rocking out and oh yeah HAVING FUN!
