CD Review
Playboy.com
September 2004
Rating: 3 of 4 Bunnyheads
The idea of these seminal ’90 pop-punkers making a concept album might sound like a big pile of Dookie, but Billie Joe, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool’s song cycle about growing up suburban is more dramatic than you might expect. Broken up into a dozen songs, the album demonstrates Green Day’s musical maturity, opting for a more restrained sound than many of the rock operas of the past. There are plenty of catchy hooks, like the riff from the current events-critiquing “Holiday,” and Billie Joe makes some pointed observations about alienation and angst without falling back on cookie-cutter punk-pop material — the eastern-tinged opener to “Extraordinary Girl” comes out of nowhere. American Idiot, a solid attempt at addressing middle class bullshit and the pains of Ritalin-popping teens, is much more innovative than anything attempted by their SoCal contemporaries. But like most thing set in the burbs — and this album contains plenty of 7-11 references — it starts to get boring and predictable over time.