Foxboro Hot Tubs – Stop Drop And Roll!!!

Green Day, most probably burnt as hell on the prospect of trying to one-up their wildly successful American Idiot, decided instead to take the pressure off by coming up with a new name, not-very-successful attempts at hiding their identities, and an album’s worth of 1950s and 60s pop-inspired songs about chicks and alligators.

It’s a fun romp, generally – with Billie Joe Armstrong even occasionally affecting a pretty decent howl that I’ve never heard on any of his Green Day outings – and the consistent 50s/60s vibe running throughout is charming, if more than a little derivative and thin in the depth department. They went – and I’m sure it’s wholly intentional – from an incredibly successful commercial pop record to what is essentially Green Day trying their hand at being a garage band. With the minimal packaging included – cardboard sleeve, no lyrics or information at all, though plenty of 50s graphic spoofs and “hi-fi” imagery – it’s almost metronomically catchy, but I also can’t help but think that if this band’s pedigree was unknown, would anyone care about this record? I mean, like I said, the stuff’s fun, but that’s about it.

And yet maybe that’s the entire point of Stop Drop And Roll!!!: dudes with more than a nodding familiarity to their 40s who decided to take a break from the fury for a while and get back to what rock’n’roll’s very foundation was built on: fun, man. Chicks and alligators, dig?