A Trilogy Begins

Green Day has been back in the recording studio this year, and unusually prolific. Apparently, the band members surveyed their efforts and decided they had enough worthy songs to fill not just a double album, but to attempt a trilogy. Over a period of just a few months, they'll be releasing three albums of material. The first arrived last week, and is appropriately entitled ¡Uno!

I was more than a bit skeptical when I heard about this rock album trilogy. One of my favorite bands, Barenaked Ladies, did a similar two-album thing a few years back with "Barenaked Ladies Are Me / Barenaked Ladies Are Men," and I was forced to conclude that it was collectively one album's worth of good music and one album's worth of "B-sides at best" that probably shouldn't have been released. But I'm still a fan of Green Day, and decided I would have to at least take the plunge on this first album and see if it was any good.

If I was expecting for maybe one out of three songs on the album to be decent, then I was very pleasantly surprised indeed. ¡Uno! is shaping up as one of my favorite albums of theirs; given time to listen more to the tracks, I could maybe even see it becoming second only to American Idiot in my mind. In a welcome change of direction, they've abandoned the "concept album"/rock opera approach of American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown and simply offered up a number of catchy, stand-alone songs.

But what makes it particularly enjoyable is that they haven't quite abandoned the formula completely. In fact, whatever past Green Day album is your personal favorite, you'll find at least one new track here that you really love; the album feels almost like a sampler of songs you could imagine were recorded at different past points in the band's long history.

Album opener "Nuclear Family" is slightly evocative of "Nice Guys Finish Last," and calls up the feeling of the album Nimrod. The anthem-like "Carpe Diem" is reminiscent of 21st Century Breakdown's "Before the Lobotomy." "Let Yourself Go" is a high-octane track more punk than anything the band has done in years, and will take you back to Shenanigans (or the exclusive track "Maria" from their Greatest Hits album). It's all there... tracks not exactly like, but comfortably similar to, those found on Dookie, American Idiot, Warning -- you name it, it's here.

That includes a little bit of experimentation, too. At the moment, my favorite track on the album is "Kill the DJ," a song that sounds almost more disco than punk, a four-on-the-floor dance track that I saw one reviewer compare to Franz Ferdinand (to the point of being a deliberate parody?).

I suppose Green Day's newest experiment still has two albums yet in which to possibly fall apart, but I'd say it's off to a great start. I give ¡Uno! an A-. Fans of the band should definitely rush to pick it up.