The Case Against Green Day

It’s actually pretty hard to describe how much I dislike Green Day. I’m serious – this is the fourth draft of this post that I’ve started because it’s also really hard to decide where to start discussing all the things I don’t like about them. Do I start with all the better bands they’re ripping off? Do I start with the black-dominated wardrobes and guyliner? Do I start with some of the laziest, most cringe-inducing songwriting I’ve ever heard? Do I start with the fact that they’re considered by some people who may or may not have cognitive disabilities (including themselves) to be a punk band?

Maybe I’ll start there, because that bugs the living shit out of me (and because I have a lot of love for good punk music. A lot of love). When I think of punk bands, I think of (who doesn’t?) the Clash, the Stooges, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys, the Jim Carroll Band, early Bad Religion, and – for some current reference – the Thermals, the Old Haunts, Titus Andronicus, and the Future of the Left. Green Day is, at best – at best – a dull, lifeless distillation of the style of music those awesome (and vastly superior) bands play(ed). The Clash gave us, “Let fury have the hour/ anger can be power”; Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” (one of the most repetitive, godawful songs I’ve heard all year. Billy Joe Armstrong knows one word that rhymes with enemy: “enemy.” Oh wait. That’s the same word. I hate this band) literally waters that down to “Violence is an energy” and “Bringing on the fury” and maybe I’m paranoid, but that seems a little close to be coincidence. Am I accusing Green Day of callously ripping of their betters? You bet your ass I am. And even their peers – one of 21st Century Breakdown‘s many awful tracks is “East Jesus Nowhere” which features a guitar riff eerily similar to (and by “eerily similar to”, I mean “shamelessly ripped off from”) Marilyn Manson’s “Disposable Teens.” Have you left no sense of decency, Green Day? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

When American Idiot came along back in 2004, lots of people loved it because they hated the President and all the bullshit he was up to. But what did that album really say about…well, anything? The answer is (drum roll please) fuckall. Sure, they got their best line ever on the title track (“I’m not a part of a redneck agenda”) but the rest of that album was generic suburban alienation bullshit. They spent 13 tracks saying nothing the Clash didn’t say better in “Lost in the Supermarket”.  The best moment of that album is “American Idiot” and it’s eclipsed in every way by (take your pick) “White Riot” by the Clash, “California Uber Alles” by the Dead Kennedys, “Anarchy in the U.K.” by the Sex Pistols, and even “Time for Heroes” by the Libertines*.  And Green Day’s utter lack of ability to handle anything approaching substance led them to squander a great song title in “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Any punk band worth a damn (hell, any kind of band with any kind of sense) doing a song with that title in 2004 could’ve made an awesome song about how frustrating it is, only a few years after 9/11, to be constantly reminded to “never forget.” But what does Green Day give us? “The innocent can never last.” Really? That’s all you got? And this was their Big Meaningful album, folks. Not only does that fail to scratch the surface, it fails to come anywhere near the surface. It floats around in space, consulting maps and charts in a futile attempt to determine the location of the surface. And it’s fucking banal, musically and lyrically. Especially lyrically. In the span of one song, we get that prize-winner about the innocent and “here comes the rain again/ falling from the stars/ drenched in my pain again/ becoming who we are.” That might be fine for any given 8th grader’s Live Journal entry, but it doesn’t cut it for discerning listeners of rock music (much less bands that claim to make rock music). It’s like Armstrong just pulled words from his copy of Poetic Imagery for Dummies Pretentious Assholes. And don’t even get me started on “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” By itself, that song puts Green Day at the top of the list of bands that need a serious cock-punching.

But people are buying their shit at an ungodly rate. Rolling Stone, a magazine whose irrelevance actually increases exponentially with every review, raved about 21st Century Breakdown‘s “rage filled punk anthems.” The Los Angeles Times called the album a “dazzling musical journey.” If “Know Your Enemy” and “21 Guns” are rage-filled punk anthems and/or dazzling musical journeys, we’re in trouble. You can like whatever you want, but I’m warning you: if you let bands like Green Day (or My Chemical Romance or any other band that is just dying to write the anthems of your prepubescent/adolescent/adult angst) climb to the top of the punk and/or rock heap, you’re running the risk of creating a nation of black-clad, whiny dullards who are capable of expressing their feelings/desires/politics only in the most vague and offensively bromidic terms. That’s a nation where Green Day dominates the radio, every television show and movie is about emo vampires, and people think Dane Cook is funny. Believe me, America: we can do better than that. We must do better.

*This song features the line, “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot,” which I mention only because it occurs to me that Green Day are the stylish kids in the riot (the kids who show up to say they were there, but don’t expect them to hurl any bricks, thank you very much). For the sake of contrast, Joe Strummer, who wrote “White Riot” actually participated in a riot. He and Paul Simonon attempted to set a police car on fire while the British cops beat up some black kids. I’m not advocating destroying cop cars in hilarious ways, but it’s certainly nice to know that Strummer and the Clash weren’t afraid to put their money where their mouths were.

Suddenly, Death is Boring… so the Fleet Foxes are Death? (A Review of Jason Lytle’s Solo Record)

I never really listened to Grandaddy and, while we’re being honest here, I would never have listened to Jason Lytle’s solo album if he wasn’t opening for Neko Case this summer. I figured I’d give him a try since I was going to see him live but then that never happened because my band got a last minute gig that caused me to skip the Neko Case show altogether. I regret nothing. Middle Cyclone is still one of the best albums of the year (and  the best album cover, um… ever) and I’ve got this Jason Lytle CD to listen to.

And to mostly enjoy. Yours Truly, the Commuter is pretty good – a “grower”, you might say (I have an anecdote about that word that I’d like to share. If’ I’ve written this elsewhere on this site, just skim over it. Anyway, I knew this tremendous dude in college named Rowan. At a party once, Rowan, fairly drunk, explained how he checked out guys’ packages on the sly and proceeded to deliver a discourse on “showers” and “growers” and so now, whenever someone refers to an album as a grower, I think of penises. Thanks, Rowan). The first thing I noticed is Lytle’s hushed voice – with just the slightest hint of rasp, it comes off sounding somewhere between E from Eels and Paul Simon with maybe a dash of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. That alone should probably be a big clue to you as to whether or not you’ll dig Lytle’s music. Commuter has some really great melodic moments, the best of which is “Yours Truly, the Commuter,” which opens the album. From there, Commuter can get a little slow and a lot precious (“Ghost of My Old Dog” is a little cheesy, but still highly listenable and hey – when my dog dies, god forbid, it’s not that hard to imagine that I’ll still prefer her noncoporeal company to that of most human beings) but it’s unfailingly gorgeous throughout, and that garners it a lot of good will from Yours Truly, the Snarky Reviewer.

Lytle is rumored to be a perfectionist in the studio (so is Axl Rose, but Jason Lytle seems to actually possess lyrical coherence and a facility for composition), and the songs on Yours Truly certainly sound meticulously composed, which may not always be to their benefit. It gives the album a sleepy feel – read my description of Lytle’s voice in the above paragraph; combined with the down-tempo nature of most of the tracks, it’s a wonder Yours Truly is safe to listen to while operating heavy machinery – but its understated beauty and relative brevity pull it out of any pitfalls it may stumble into. And the worst song on the album, “It’s the Weekend” is one of the most uptempo. Why is it the worst, you ask? It’s a throwaway track about how great Saturday is. The lyrics amount to little more than “it’s the weekend” and that’s just not the sort of thing I’m going to let slide. It’s lazy, especially for someone as skilled as Jason Lytle. Although, now that I listen to “Furget It” again, it’s also lyrically lazy but sonically sublime, so there you go. I reserve the right to contradict myself. And you too. Especially you.

Yours Truly is probably a good record for people who dug Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast as much (or almost as much) as I did – it’s no Noble Beast, obviously, but it’s actually quite lovely in its own right. If you’re going to listen to what my oft-cited pal Zac (we music snobs must refer to each other often) would call “Wuss rock”, you shouldn’t be indiscriminate. I know Pitchfork likes your Richard Hawleys and your Jenses Lenkman and guys like that, but they bore the shit out of me. Jason Lytle is – for sure – on the better side of that crowded field of performers, nearer Andrew Bird (who, to me, exists in an entirely separate category of composer-nerdy awesomeness) or M. Ward than to that neo-lounge bullshit that the Pitchfork kids are peddling. Yes, neo-lounge is a genre I just made up, but you probably know what I’m talking about. And another thing – I’m tired of Pitchfork’s boner for Fleet Foxes. I get it – they make pretty harmonies. They also don’t say a goddamn thing. Jason Lytle’s music is just as pretty (sometimes prettier) and he actually wrings more pathos out of his dead dog than Fleet Foxes does out of… whatever they sing about on their whole album (and EP, for all you completists out there). Fleet Foxes is pretty music for tree-dwelling hippies and Jason Lytle is pretty music for the rest of us.  In fact, as I write this, I’m soaking up Yours Truly‘s closer, “Here for Good”, and it definitely blows away everything I saw Fleet Foxes do at Coachella. Lytle sings, “Suddenly, death is just boring/ so I’m here for good,” which is a line I like very much, but he sings it like a guy who knows that he, like all of us, can’t possibly be here for good. Take that as a lesson, Bollocks! readers: life is short, and lots of people can make prettyish music, so choose wisely. Don’t choose Fleet Foxes. Meaning: do choose Jason Lytle.