Green Day – ¡Uno!

Firstly, let me start off by saying that this band is the first “punk” band I ever listened to. My parents bought me American Idiot when it was released in 2004, when I was 10 years old and I have fond memories of listening to it night after night for hours on end when I came home from school. It’s not classed as a “cool” album to like, and I’ll probably lose a lot of hipster internet points for even admitting that I still own it, but whatever, that album shaped my taste in music as it is today. Imagine my excitement when I heard that in 2012, my favourite band between 2004 and 2006 was releasing not one, but three albums. That surely had to make up for 21st Century Breakdown, right? Not exactly.

Littered with generic similes and forced rhyming, “Nuclear Family” is a track that I probably shouldn’t like, but fuck it, I do. It’s the Green Day that my 10 year old self knows and loves and it’s a pretty strong start to a trilogy of albums that admittedly I was probably a little bit too excited about. Whilst it’s not anything revolutionary, the catchy 3:00 minute track, with it’s raw vocals, faint token “whoa ohs” and steady drum beat, only needs one play to firmly implant itself into your brain. If you’re still not convinced, there’s even a little lesson ala Billie Joe Armstrong about counting backwards from 10 to finish off on, lovely eh?

“Let Yourself Go” is the go to track if you’re looking for a punchy punk rock anthem that keeps true to form, whilst it could quite easily be a reject from 2004’s American Idiot, the catchy sing-along chorus and Armstrong’s gravelly vocals cruelly gives me hope that ¡Uno! is going to steadily improve, and whilst I end up being sorely disappointed nearing the end, ¡Uno! closes with my favourite track, and unbelievably, it’s one I absolutely hated it to begin with. Anyone that knows me knows my vendetta against boring, repetitive songs but “Oh Love” got into my head like a parasite when it was released as a single and it still hasn’t left. It has an old American Rock ‘n Roll feel to it, and Armstrong’s guitar work is certainly something to be admired. Lyrically, like the vast majority of the album, nothing really stands out to me but Armstrong’s pained vocals make it believable, and it’s only at this point that I realise just how much better his harmonies have gotten over the years.

Here’s where my criticisms start, and quite frankly, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s not that ¡Uno! is a bad album, but it’s just a haphazard combination of American Idiot/21st Century Breakdownclippings and direct rips of other and better tracks that I can’t bring myself to enjoy at all. “Kill The DJ” may as well be The Clash’s “The Magnificent Seven” which would be forgivable (what with The Clash being one of my all time favourite bands and all) if the lyrics weren’t so God awful. I get the feeling that the effort Green Day have put in to producing a trilogy of albums has ultimately backfired. Instead of putting out one high quality album, ¡Uno! is instead merely littered with needless profanity to fill spaces in tracks, and there’s very little creativity from a musical perspective. It feels lazy and anyone that was to listen to the first three bars of almost every song on this album with no prior knowledge of it would instantly be able to recognise it as a Green Day song, and since this is a band I’ve grown up with and a band that I will always have a soft spot for, normally I’d say that I’m okay with that. But I’m not. There are so many great up and coming bands out there, so many that cite Green Day as an influence and I get the feeling that they haven’t tried at all with this album, that they can’t be arsed anymore and that they have no desire to continue to inspire like they used to and quite frankly, I don’t think I’ll bother with the following two.

I think it would be fair to say that ¡Uno! isn’t made up of many, if any, “stand out” tracks. The likes of “Stay The Night” and “Loss of Control” carry themselves with the same melody as those before and after, the same lack of lyrical depth and lack of conviction, which really does lead me to question whether Green Day really are past it now. There’s very little to comment on Green Day’s musicianship, with Tre Cool, Mike Dirnt and Jason White (yes, that ever elusive but existent unofficial member) dragging their trusty three chords back for another round. Yes, it’s true that there’s room for improvement with another two instalments of this trilogy yet to grace us, but all I can say is don’t get your hopes up.