Green Day
Saviors

Anniversaries trace a space-time groove in our lives, and for music, they hold a particular significance. Massimo Cotto, between the lines of his latest book “Il Rock di padre in figli*” (see my review), argues that the true measure of music is time. If an album is still remembered after twenty years, it means it has left us something.

For Green Day, 2024 is a year of anniversaries. We celebrate thirty years of “Dookie” and twenty of “American Idiot”. Two albums we remember perfectly, which have passed the test of time with flying colors and lead us back to two different eras, even though they are only a couple of decades apart.

“Saviors”, the brand new studio work by Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool, and Mike Dirnt, is at once the closing of the circle and the celebration of the years of glory. The illustrious and brilliant production of Rob Cavallo returns, as if to obligatorily participate in the party, having been part of the two previous ones.

Being the last chapter of a trilogy, “Saviors” picks up the sounds and themes of the two previous episodes, re-embracing punk rock and shelving the garage rock of recent releases. It returns to pointing the finger at American politics, as if nothing has changed in twenty years, aligning the thought to the present day, with references to the Trump that was and the one feared to still be. “The American Dream Is Killing Me”, the first radio-friendly single with a hammering chorus, targets conspiracy theories, the attitude towards immigration, the homeless, and real estate speculation. It also wants to tell us that the American dream is more than anything an ordeal, as Billie Joe reaffirmed in a recent interview, also bringing up the toxicity of social media and their capacity to divide people. Everything music does not do.

The Green Day frontman does not give up this time either on addressing personal problems in the lyrics and their inevitable evolution. He does so very clearly in “Dilemma”, whispering and then shouting “welcome to my problem, it’not an invitation, this is my dilemma…I don’t want to be a dead man walking“, among headbanging riffs on the refrains.

It is precisely headbanging and the past that are talked about in the beautiful “1981” (“She’s gonna bang her head like 1981“), winking at the Dead Kennedys.

The album cover, with pink tones accompanying the black and white, contains an implicit homage to the Ramones and their “Rocket to Russia” from 1977 (a choice I don't think is accidental, given recent events). Yet another tribute, after the more explicit one by Blink 182, present in the video for “Dance with Me”, taken from their latest work.

The child on the cover, who shrugs in front of an evident theater of urban guerrilla, perfectly identifies with “Coma City”, which with its speed talks about an anarchic and chaotic city, through a mix of somewhat British somewhat Californian punk rock. The same does “Living In The ’20s”, which points the finger at the arms market, bitterly recalling the 2021 shooting in Boulder, Colorado, at the King Soopers supermarket.

"Look Ma, No Brains", “Bobby Sox” and “One Eyed Bastard”, among the most lively, want to address all generations; the voice scratches and the riffs ruffle like in the old days. If the second one even smells of grunge, the third, with its stuttering rhythm, recalls “The Passenger” by Iggy Pop”.

In the band's entire discography, ballads have never been lacking, “Wake Me up When September Ends” above all but also the delicate and acoustic “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”. Here it is “Father to a Son” the most introspective and mature piece and the episode that shows us how the lyrics in this new work are even more valuable than the music. Strings accompany the voice of a father who, laying himself bare, promises to do everything possible to best guide his son through the traps of an era full of deceit and difficulties:

“You’re a lighthouse in a storm, from the day that you were born…Is there anything I can do. A wisdom where your heart is heading to a place you want more than I can give, father to a son“

The quality of the words is reinforced by "Goodnight Adeline", "Suzie Chapstick" and "Strange Days Are Here to Stay" while the loop of "Corvette Summer" is a bit disappointing in this sense. It closes with two not very memorable episodes like “Fancy Sauce” or the eponymous closing “Saviors”, made of arpeggios and choruses with little bite. Being the last two tracks, they give the impression of being reluctant to make an impact, because they are the children of a narrative that is now concluded.

We are far from the nineties, and that decade wrote many chapters of music history. Green Day, whether they like it or not, were absolute protagonists of that movement that rebelled against the classic punk canons, proposing a more carefree, laid-back, and fun alternative. Perhaps it is no coincidence that from the garage rock of their latest works, the three from Berkeley wanted to return to the punk rock of their beginnings. As if to remind that everything began in the sixties in Uncle Sam's land before landing in the Queen's, making even more noise. The black and white of the cover tells us about it, the chaos in the background, it whispers to us the references to the historical protagonists of that rebellious and nihilistic era.

Adrienne Nesser, wife of Billie Joe Armstrong (with him since 1994), during an interview shortly after the release of “American Idiot”, confided that she had never thought Green Day could achieve such a public response and reach such longevity. More than thirty years have passed but both Billie Joe and Blue, his historic Fernandes Stratocaster covered in stickers, are still here to remind us that time is the true measure of music. And that neither albums with pompous covers nor an expensive guitar with a grandiose name are necessary to conquer more than one generation. This means being able to make history.

And so, long live Green Day.