In the final moments of Green Day’s new album, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong sings, “We all die young someday.” But Saviors — one of the best Green Day albums in recent memory — shows that the band has plenty of life left.
Saviors sees Green Day — Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool — make a welcome course correction from 2020’s Father of All Motherf–kers, a slightly unfocused album that incorporated elements of indie and arena rock, resulting in an LP as sonically messy as its badly drawn cover art.
On their new album, the trio dispenses with the repetitive handclaps and peacocking falsettos of Father for a Green Day album that sounds a lot like Green Day. It’s fast-paced, irreverent and, most of all, fun. The band accomplished this aesthetic comeback by embracing their strengths: making catchy rock songs about being in love, screwing up but getting by and having fun while the world burns.
Opening with “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” the album rides on a swinging drumbeat reminiscent of “Longview,” the band’s 1994 breakthrough single. There’s a persistent sense that Saviors was heavily influenced by Green Day’s past. This year marks the 20th and 30th anniversaries, respectively, of the two albums that have come to define the band’s legacy: the politically infused American Idiot and the pop-punk classic Dookie. Additionally, there are songs on Saviors — like the gleeful “Look Ma, No Brains” — that could have been plucked from Insomniac or Nimrod, the albums that followed Green Day’s 1994 major-label debut.
Elsewhere on Saviors, Green Day channels their charismatic apathy into power pop. “Corvette Summer” echoes ’90s punk — a vibe that’s once again in vogue — in sound and substance. “Don’t want no money / Don’t want no fame,” sings Armstrong. “All I want’s my records / Making my pain go away.”
Thankfully, Green Day stops short of forgetting they’re all in their 50s now, steering clear of the midlife rocker crisis cliché by avoiding songs about subjects they’ve outgrown. Instead, Armstrong’s lyrics remain as earnest and truthful as ever. “Bobby Sox” is a new bisexual anthem that should be blasted during Pride this year, while “Dilemma” is about confronting (or not confronting) one’s lingering substance abuse. The tender “Father to a Son,” meanwhile, reflects on the weight and responsibilities that come with fatherhood. (All three members of Green Day are dads.)
Though Green Day eschewed politics in their early years, they haven’t shied away from expressing their populist point of view since 2004’s American Idiot. On Saviors, the band decries the way the modern world has left people “unemployed and obsolete.” Later, on “Coma City,” they rage against how we’re “bankrupt[ing] the planet for a–holes in space,” taking a dig at vanity space travel projects funded by billionaires. The title track reflects how disenchanted the world has become, serving as a call for someone who can lead us back from the spiritual and emotional brink.
Saviors doesn’t offer any answers to the problems it raises, but that was never Green Day’s forte. Instead, the album sees the band rely on its strengths by pointing out that it’s all a mess against a catchy beat and infectious lyrics.
The new album isn’t perfect, as Green Day sometimes falters back into arena rock, resulting in the album’s weakest moments. “One Eyed Bastard” comes off as an awkward sports anthem, and its guitar riff has drawn comparisons to Pink’s “So What” (which itself is similar to Deep Purple’s “Black Night”). “Goodnight Adeline” is arguably the best Weezer song that Rivers Cuomo never wrote, and “Suzie Chapstick” and “Living in the ’20s” give off Green Album vibes.
Despite these missteps, Saviors succeeds in saving Green Day. These punk veterans — who all turn 52 this year — excavate elements of their past and successfully marry them to their present to produce a satisfying, albeit imperfect, experience on their 14th studio album.
The band hasn’t pulled off the impossible by creating a peer to Dookie and American Idiot. But 30 years removed from the moment they ushered in punk’s most successful era, Saviors shows Green Day still has the capacity to be great.
Green Day’s Saviors is out Friday, January 19.
