Green Day - 'King-Sized Stadium Rock'

This is the week that Green Day's new CD "21st Century Breakdown" comes out (on Friday). You can stream it over at Rhapsody or hear preview clips at We7.

The band is readying itself for a real NYC media invasion next week. Green Day will play NYC's Bowery Ballroom (a great venue) next Monday night, Webster Hall on Tuesday night, and a Central Park outdoor made-for TV event next Friday (May 22 - GMA).

Early CD reviews are mostly encouraging - Greg Kot's review from the Chicago Tribune says "One thing hasn’t changed. The music rocks, only now the snotty, faux-British accent has been replaced by a full-throated cry that owes as much to classic rock as it does to basement punk. The exuberant pop-punk of old has morphed into epic Who-style stadium-rock, with thundering drums underpinning windmill chords and shout-from-the-rooftops choruses. Rock operas demand nothing less, and Green Day delivers."

Spin wrote of the track "March of the Dogs" - "Handclaps, surf guitar, lyrics about sodomized dogs -- all accompanying a scathing indictment of contemporary religion. Hard and fast from start to finish, this spiky four-and-a-half-minute tune finds Armstrong ranting, "I threw my conscience in the river in the shadow of doubt," referencing the famous Biblical passage, Psalm 23:4, which reads, "I will walk through the valley of the shadow of death... I will fear no evil."

The Guardian UK writes... "For all its occasional nods to punk past - like the Sex Pistols' Holidays In the Sun, Horseshoes and Handgrenades opens with tramping jackboots while the ghost of Hüsker Dü haunts Viva La Gloria's tune - the main currency of 21st Century Breakdown is king-sized stadium rock. The episodic title track lurches from Big Country to Queen to Mott the Hoople; Before the Lobotomy is propelled by Keith Moon drum fills; there are McCartney-esque piano ballads. All of them display the same impressive, if faintly unnerving ability to come up with melodies that sound instantly familiar."

Green Day mainman Billie Joe Armstrong recently told MTV News... "We just wanted to evolve naturally. There was no decision like, 'This is how we're gonna sound.' But for this it was like, 'Let's keep moving forward and see where the music takes us,'" he told MTV News. "I love a lot of, like, British invasion. I love, like, the Who and Cheap Trick and the Ramones. And it's like trying to take that power-pop or that pop-punk or whatever you want to call it, and stretching it into places that are further than we've ever gone."

Sounds good to me! Call it whatever you like, but it sounds like despite its length, seriousness and whatever else the critics throw their way, Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown might be the punk rock 'n roll record of the summer (year?).