Green Day have spent the last decade trying to shake the burden of importance. The trio’s 2004 smash American Idiot didn’t just reinvigorate their career, it elevated them from fading ’90s alt-rock holdovers to a big-tent attraction with voice-of-their-generation prestige. Sixteen years later, it’s still astounding to think that Green Day somehow recorded one of the defining rock albums of the George W. Bush era. But that critical breakthrough also created stifling expectations for the records that followed. Rock-opera grandeur and solemn political protest were never the most natural fit for a pop-punk act whose breakout hit was about masturbating out of sheer boredom.
Save for 2009’s spiritual sequel 21st Century Breakdown, everything Green Day has recorded since has been an attempt to reclaim some of their former irreverence, starting with their low-stakes 2012 trilogy ¡UNO!, ¡DOS!, and ¡TRÉ! and continuing with 2016’s tepid Revolution Radio. Each of those records attempted a leaner, meaner reboot of the band, yet they all stopped well short of Father of All Motherfuckers, the most convincingly carefree Green Day record of the new millennium. At just 26 minutes, it’s the band’s briefest album ever—a full five minutes shorter than even 39/Smooth—and it pointedly resists political commentary on the times, as prime for comment as the times may be. It’s as if the band imagined what shape an American Idiot: Trump Edition might take, then made the exact opposite of it.
In its early stretch, Father of All... is sometimes barely even recognizable as Green Day. On the title track, a bluesy retro-stomper in the Black Keys mold, Billie Joe Armstrong trades his lippy sneer for a Jack White falsetto, while the Hives-esque “Fire, Ready, Aim” imagines the kind of rock-revival makeover Green Day might have attempted in the mid-’00s if their rock-opera muse never struck.
From the candied guitar compression of Dookie to the Blu-Ray clarity of American Idiot, top-dollar production has always been Green Day’s secret weapon, and here, as ever, they aren’t shy about deploying it. “Oh Yeah” plays directly to hockey arenas (it can’t be a coincidence that the band just inked a two-year partnership with the NHL). But Father of All... really comes to life when it stops giving its throwback rock the beer commercial treatment and just plays it for straightforward kicks. Lots of bands channel Big Star and the Replacements, but few do it with the verve of “Meet Me On The Roof” and “I Was a Teenage Teenager,” Green Day’s most fetching and youthful songs in ages. The trio sounds reinvigorated, more like hungry newcomers staking their claim than a band a quarter-century removed from their major-label debut.
It’s a genuine blast hearing Green Day lock-in with music this peppy and spirited, at least for a little while. The album aims for instant gratification and achieves it so efficiently that it can’t help but burn fast. They band have no secrets to share; they reveal them all upfront, and its most eager hooks can begin to grate after just a few spins. But there are worse things than a record that doesn’t play the long game. Father of All Motherfuckers asks for almost none of your time and makes good on it. Who knew Green Day had a record this humble left in them?
Buy: Rough Trade
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