Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
How is it possible that one of the great American pseudo punk-rock bands of the last twenty years can deliver two wildly contrasting albums out to the masses in the matter of weeks?
If Uno! was the attempt to take back control of Green Day and take it away from the fan base that had held them in such high regard over two decades, then Dos!, its companion and much better sounding brother in a three course setting allows the fans to wrestle the idealism back and by everything that is considered musically holy, it can only be hoped that it stays there, or goes one better again for Tre! when it released soon.
There doesn’t seem to be the same petty obsession with self-indulgence that Uno! aspired to, no running round the family home with a machete trying to tear apart what the family was left holding dearly and certainly not putting a solitary finger up to those that helped raise the preconscious but brilliant child on the album. Instead what the listener is left cradling is an album that is enjoyable and a lot of fun to crank through the stereo. Still petulant, which is to its credit, but not annoyingly ungrateful either.
Dos! raises the game by a country mile, then again that really wasn’t hard, it is like comparing chopsticks to Mozart, to be fair chopsticks is still a lot easier on the ears than Uno! Where it falls down, is that the music is either great, F**ktime, Nightlife, Lazybones, Ashley or Make out Party or deeply dull and tired in Wild One, Stray Heart or Amy. Amy is by far the worst song on the album and seems ill conceived and slightly off kilter.
It may be laudable to write a song dedicated to the life of Amy Winehouse, who sadly passed on in 2011 but if you are going to write a song and then play it as a spiritual offering to a great singer, why not make it great as well, memorable for the right reasons and not as if the song came to you in the studio when you realised that you still had half an hour of time on the meter to use up. It is perhaps the worst kind of eulogy and Green Day are so much better than that.
A much better album than its predecessor and whilst nowhere near the highs of the past, at least it is an enjoyable ramble through the heads of the band rather than the drudgery inflicted on their fans with the Uno! release.
Ian D. Hall