Green Day - ¡Uno!

• David Pollock
• 9 October 2012

The first of Green Day's new trilogy of albums is a decent pop album trying to be something more

All credit to Green Day for showing some adventure and recording a trilogy of albums (¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and, inevitably, ¡Tre!) for release over the space of three months, but Billie Joe Armstrong’s claim that they’re going ‘epic as fuck’ is somewhat misleading.

Back to basics is more like it, an enthusiastic if watered down stew of ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll, Ramones-style punk rock and eyebrow-furrowing college radio indie rock. ‘Stay the Night’ and ‘Fell For You’ are soppy love songs trying to play it cool, ‘Kill the DJ’ is a confused seeming evisceration of club culture set to a bouncing ‘Take Me Out’ beat and ‘Loss of Control’, like much of the album, is a sweary facsimile of real teen angst. A decent pop record trying hard to be something more.

Green Day's American Idiot, the musical is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, 22-27 Oct, and Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, 29 Oct-3 Nov.