Green Day Saviors Album Review

Eternal Punksters Green Day are back with a new album – Saviors. The marketing, currently in overdrive, suggests that Saviors is somewhere between Dookie and American Idiot.

The fact that Rob Cavall is back with the trio lends some credence to this claim.  Rob Cavall is the producer of Green Day’s commercial breakthrough album “Dookie”, and their 6 time platinum Goliath  “American Idiot”

Dookie was the soundtrack to my mid 90s youth. I think I killed 2 Sony Walkmans playing ‘Welcome to Paradise’ on cassette. Dookie was the album that opened my ears to bands like The Offspring, Oasis, The Cranberries, Ash etc.

While Dookie was full of the hedonistic joys of being a teenager, American Idiot became a different beast.

American Idiot changed the band’s punk style. Released at the time the band might have split up.   Losing the rawness of their early punk days for a more mainstream polished sound. Purists say the band sold out, but in reality this was a band looking to re-define or exit. They took aim squarely at the American fascination with war, inequalities and religious fundamentalism. With American Idiot, Green Day got their Live Aid moment, in that it catapulted the band to a whole new audience, spawning a hugely successful Broadway show in the process.

The albums that have followed have never reached the same heights, although they have all continued Green Day’s punk origins.

Saviors, it seems, is a genuine attempt for the band to get a third wind. Appeal to both the punk purists and the mainstream media lovers. For a start, Billie Joe’s Voice seems to be aging like a fine wine. Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool create musical harmonies that are on a whole different level to the previous 13 albums.

Green Day kick off the Album with a spiritual successor to American Idiot.  ‘The American Dream Is Killing Me’, a track that continues taking aim at American society, while simultaneously being a banger. Did I notice a Beatles influence? Yes, I think I did.

Nods to Dookie and the follow up album Insomniac are scattered throughout Saviors. Tracks ‘Strange Days Are Here To Say’,’ Look Ma No Brains’, ‘Coma City’ remind me of the earlier ‘Geek Stink Breath’ and ’Welcome To Paradise’.

Bobby Sox continues Billy Joe’s playful take on sexuality by swapping ‘Do You Wanna To Be My Girlfriend?’ with ‘Do you Wanna be my Boyfriend?’, similar to how he used the gender swap in ‘Basket Case “She says it’s lack of sex that’s bringing me down, I went to a whore, he said my life’s a bore”

One Eyed Bastard, title track Saviors and Dilemma take the album to a more recent sound style, creating the more polished and layered wall of sound we have come to expect.

It wouldn’t be a Green Day album without a hint of 1960’s Americana, so que up ‘Corvette Summer’ for some Beach Boys vibes.

Overall thoughts on Saviors

Making this an album that mixes old and new, means that unlike American Idiot, Saviors does not carry a constant message. Instead we get 15 individually brilliantly crafted songs that talk about love, anger, family, and the injustices of modern society. It’s refreshing that 14 albums by Green Day can still create original music without resorting to re-hashing, this is peak Green Day.

So have they managed to blend old and new? Well having listened to Saviors, I would say yes, .. yes they have!