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American Idiot
Green Day
Warner Brothers
Released last week, Green Day’s latest album “American Idiot” is exactly what the nostalgic fans of the band have been looking for. If you’ve missed Green Day, you will be happy to know they’re back with a brand new, driving sound and hard hitting lyrics.
Following the political movement that the likes of the Rock Against Bush Tour and powerhouse A Perfect Circle have been working with on their latest albums, the first single off the album is the title track, sharing with the listener lead singer Billie Joe’s political distaste as he belts “Don’t wanna be an American idiot, Don’t want a nation under the new media. And can you hear the sound of hysteria? The subliminal mindf**k America.”
The album has a mixture of many sounds, from the fast punk tracks “St. Jimmi” and “Letterbomb” and ballads “Give Me Novacaine” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” American Idiot has a little something for everyone. Green Day even busts out a Middle-Eastern drum sample for the track “Extraordinary Girl,” which adds a nice variety.
Not often seen on a punk rock album, Green Day’s track list for “American Idiot” includes two songs that pass the nine minute mark. The album’s best would have to be one of those nine-minute tracks, “Homecoming.” It has great drums, guitar riffs and the usual pissed off – but singing happily about it – sound. Being nine minutes, however, it’s one of those songs that has many different parts to it, like “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” by Billy Joel.
Since it’s release, “American Idiot” has topped chart after chart and it hasn’t stopped yet. I don’t think it’s going to.
-Aerin Raymond
In Love and Death
The Used
Reprise Records
The second release from the Orem, Utah based band, The Used, “In Love and Death,” sees the band rise to a new plateau of songwriting. While still maintaining the patented sound that made their first album so popular, they have managed to raise the bar with a complexity that sets them apart.
Lines such as “And I know in my heart we all die, like the day and the night, like the sun in the sky, all this I’m giving up,” from the track “Light with a Sharpened Edge,” typify the album’s dejected yet hopeful theme. Other standout tracks include “Take it Away” in which they recruited Danny Lohner of Nine Inch Nails to help with programming, and the bouncy “Lunacy Fringe,” which sounds more like The Partridge Family having a bad day than a Bert McCracken-penned track.
Fans of the groups harder edge will not be disappointed, with the inclusion of the brutal track “Sound Effects and Overdramatics,” among others. Outside of the music itself, credit should be given to the album’s artistic direction as well. Alex Pardee of Eye Suck Ink was brought in to design visual aspects of the album along with the website, which is stunning. It brings a new outlook that only enhances the music.
Although there are no real surprises, “In Love and Death” does not disappoint and continues to build on the solid musical history that will continue to keep The Used at the forefront.
-Jesse Davis
