Consider this a different kind of Listening Post and more like a Reflections Column. With Reflecting Pool I will be going back through the catalog of bands that I love and have been following for years. I will try to be as impartial as possible, but I admit that I am biased. This is a little more loosey than the LPs.
“Everybody loves a joke, but no one likes a fool.”
Green Day – Warning – 2000 (iTunes – Amazon)
Opening with the acoustic, unplugged anthem, “Warning”, this album sorts of suggests either a band at a crossroads or stifled by their roots.
Then, what’s this? Another mid-tempo, melodic, bass driven, hook laden song! “Blood, Sex & Booze” is the thematic cousing to Dookie’s “Pulling Teeth”. A theme I’m all too familiar with. Only this time the narrator’s not afraid of his captor. No, he longs for the punishment. It fulfills him.
Then we’re on to Church on Sunday. A ramp up, rave up relationship song of compromise. And it’s excellent.
I’m going with stifled by their roots. There’s only so much power/punk one can do. If you have the songwriting chops the songs can fit in any idiom. Hell, they could be country, disco or coffee shop singer songwriter, right?
So why not stretch the boundaries? There’s still enough bombast, as in the forementioned, “Church”.
In the past, a great band would switch things up. The Beatles just wrote good songs. Queen played everything from Gospel to punk to disco. You have to. To keep things fresh.
This is what Green Day does here. Their punk roots have turned their back on them. I think by this time they had been banned from the very club they started in, right? While Bille Joe has railed against the hippies of the 60’s and the boomer generation he is, at the same time, a victim of his own roots. All sorts of styles bubble through these songs and, while they are not “punk” they still all sound like Green Day.
Only this sort of confidence and punk “no fear” aesthetic could allow them to put out the brilliant “Misery”, which owes more than just a passing glance to Kurt Weill and might well be one of the best songs the band has ever recorded. By virtue of it’s “Fuck you, we’re doing the oompas, anyway! You don”t like it? Here’s a mariachi band, too!”
Then, just when you wonder what the hell you are listening to…”Deadbeat Holiday”. Classic Green Day.
They wear their influences on their sleeves, too. Who can’t hear “Stand by Me” in “Macy’s Day Parade”? Or Petula Clark’s “Downtown” in “Waiting”?
Billie Joe is wresting those great songwriters of the past and jamming them through his own taffy machine and coming up with fresh takes and new ideas.
I don’t like to quote other reviewers but I will for this recap. AllMusic’s Stephen Erlewine gets it right when he says:
Warning may not be an innovative record per se, but it’s tremendously satisfying; it finds the band at a peak of songcraft and performance, doing it all without a trace of self-consciousness. It’s the first great pure pop album of the new millennium.
Amen.
Is it better than Dookie? It’s not the same. Not by a long shot. This is a different band even though the players are the same. Warning makes me happy and giddy with every song. It’s the kind of album you love to rediscover.
Grade A
A Side: Misery, Waiting, Macy’s Day Parade, Minority (In it’s heart it’s just an Irish shanty jig, right?)
BlindSide: Fashion Victim, Jackass,
DownSide: Hold On
This is the album of theirs I’ve listened to least since Dookie. Still trying to get a handle on it. About 4 outstanding tracks but the rest has never really pentrated my consciousness. I’ll keep trying.