Consumer Guide Album

Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown [Reprise, 2009]
I tried, I swear. Played it over and over so the music would sink in before I assessed a concept unlikely to prove profound. That way I could give it up to individual tracks whatever the state of Billie Joe Armstrong's geopolitical acumen. But all this did was convince me that I disliked the tunes I remembered even more than those I didn't--especially the slow ones that set up the fast ones within the same song, a hotcha-gotcha device with which the Broadway-bound ex-punk is deeply smitten. I don't like right-wing Christianists either. But as every oppressed teen in the right-wing orbit knows full well, they're not as garbled and simplistic as Armstrong's anthems insist. C