¡UNO! Review

¡UNO! - Review

The whole thing kicks off with Nuclear Family, a fairly fast-paced romp of a song which takes the band back to it's American Idiot-era of songs, also seeming reminiscent of earlier Green Day thanks to the drum-solo opening providing a nice jumping-in point for the ¡UnoDosTre! album trilogy. As the song draws to a close, Billie Joe's growling countdown prepares the listener for what's left to come. 1 down, approximately 36 to go.

And so commences the second song; Stay the Night. Opening with an acoustic riff which gradually builds in pace over the course of about 25 seconds before it crescendos into the full-band riff of the song. And it is with this song that we see the first seeds of Green Day's direction for these albums. As Billie Joe Armstrong said in interviews during the promotional run prior to the release of these albums, sometimes he just wants to "write about fucking". And in this song he goes for it. With the first few lines of vocals we hear consisting of BJA's impulses...

"Well I ain't got much time so I'll get to the point/Do you wanna share a ride and get the fuck out of this joint?/I got an impulse so repulsive that it burns/I wanna break your heart until it makes your stomach churn"

Stay the Night maintains a steady drum beat throughout, providing a sense of uniformity, but also making it very catchy and an instant, stand-out favourite of mine on ¡UNO! in spite of the other great songs present here. All things considered, Stay the Night could almost be a love song, but the references to sex throughout make it almost too dirty to be considered a true love song. But it's good enough for me, that's for sure! One final thing to note about this song is something that will be very familiar to those who have seen Green Day perform live. Billie Joe Armstrong gets a lot of mileage out of coaxing his audiences into following his lead in a chorus of shouts of "Hey-Oh". Stay the Night takes this to the next level, actually including BJA's introductory shout of "Said Hey-Ohh" in the studio version of the song.

Next, we have Carpe Diem. Which is described in the lyrics themselves as "a battle cry". No introduction on this one, just a drum-opening and we're straight into the song. No messing around. Of course, the Latin phrase Carpe Diem means 'seize the day', and that is exactly the message behind this song as well, telling the listener to take arms and seize the day. In Carpe Diem, Billie Joe's vocals sound so intense and focused, it makes me believe that he genuinely means every word of the song, with the intensity dropping and rising in peaks and troughs, but overall the whole song sounds so sincere it's easy to overlook. This one ends on the inspiring chorus, asking "are we all too young to die?" A fitting end to a song about questioning authority and grabbing opportunity by the balls.

And with the fourth song on the album, we are again instantly pulled in by the riff, with the first line of the lyrics setting the listener up for what's to come; Let Yourself Go is an (almost) angry song about that one person, that everybody knows, who just never shuts their big mouth. The friend that bullshits and creates a false life and let's themselves loose in it, just to make them seem like a more interesting person ("It's your lie, tell it how you like/Small minds seems to think alike/Shut your mouth cos you're talking too much and I don't give a fuck anyway") and it really shows, from the vocals, that Billie Joe means it when he says he doesn't give a damn about that person's lies. Unfortunately, this song gets a tad repetitive at times, and after listening multiple times can get boring due to its extended repetition of "Let Yourself Go" as a lyric. Still well worth listening to, though.

"Someone kill the DJ/Shoot that fucker down!" Radio DJs, playing mainstream pop that panders to the masses. And Green Day are sick of it, so they give their fans one simple instruction: Shoot the fucker down. Kill the DJ is something new for Green Day; a dance song in a world of power-pop and punk. If nothing else, this is a fun song; providing the listener with an opportunity to just let their hair down and jump around for a bit - definitely one to get live crowds going. Unfortunately, as was the case with Let Yourself Go, Kill the DJ could easily be considered repetitive and dull to some, even though it provides some alternative methods of killing the DJ ("Hold him underwater till the motherfucker drowns"). Although, this song should be considered as what it is. A pastiche of modern pop music, parodying the likes of Lady Gaga through its occasional use of faux auto-tune. And whilst that is quite brilliant, and almost funny, the song is more than just a parody. It's a social commentary. The pubs and clubs and dancing rooms and whatever else: Green Day does not approve of them, describing pockets full of pills and likening the modern world to "Sodom and Gomorrah in the century of thrills". Really well-done song, but won't be liked by many Green Day fans due to how different it is from the rest of the album.

And as the first half of the album comes to a close, everything slows down with a love song. A proper one. Fell for You tells the story of a dream revealing your love for someone, and no matter how much you deny it - the love is there. BJA sings about denial, distractions and lust in this one. But it all comes back to kisses for the one he loves. Even if some sexual connotations are present within the song, it's still damn good easy listening (as easy as Green Day gets) and is a fitting break from the madness of the first half of ¡UNO!

UPDATE:
And so begins the second half of ¡UNO!, kicking off with the slightly insane Loss of Control. This song seems to be, as the titles suggests, about losing control of yourself as the lyrics quite clearly state; "We're all crazy, you're all crazy now/We're so crazy, you've all gone insane".The song opens with a drum beat and the hints of bass for 10 seconds, before kicking off the main song, with Billie Joe Armstrong's growling vocals coming at you very soon after, declaring all his enemies as "so fucking useless". Very similar to the classic songs of American Idiot, particularly so in making a lyrical reference to the character of Ol' Whatshisname from the 2004 concept album. As the song begins to draw to a close we here the guitar riff as a solo along with the chorus once more, including the aforementioned lyrics denouncing everyone as crazy, but made unique from the rest of the song by turning the instrumentation almost all the way down and instead turning up the backing vocals, making it one of my favourite moments of the song, just because you can clearly hear all three members of the band.

Moving on now to Troublemaker, another song in the same vein as Stay the Night in so far as it focuses on sex once again; albeit in a much subtler way... Sort of.The first line of the second verse of vocals in the song sums it up nicely ("Hey! I wanna get inside of you!") before the song continues with some alternate hints at the sexual aspects of the song, such as soon after the lyrics taking the listener on a bit of misdirection with the line "I like your BMW" hinting that the lucky person Billie Joe is drawling at has a good taste in vehicles. Surely Green Day wouldn't bother with such mundane lyrics, right?! Absolutely right! "I like your BMXellent tits with a tattoo of a pig sniffing glue!" Okay, definitely not mundane then. I've heard people complaining about Troublemaker, saying that it's the weakest song on the album but I disagree - in my opinion it's a really fun song that (although it doesn't fit with the rest of the album in terms of instrumentation) has themes that follow through the entire album, and is definitely worth listening to.

Angel Blue. By all intents and purposes a love song for the teenage generation. Alternatively, it could be considered a song about broken hearts. Either way, it's catchy as anything thanks in no small part to the amazing riff and the simple, yet effective, lyrics ("Gotta build it up, just to burn it down! You're a princess, I'm a fucking clown!") building a song that will be overlooked by some, but is well worth giving a listen to.

As ¡UNO! begins to wind down, so do the songs, moving away from the raunchy anger of the rest of the album, and moving more into the sweetness of Sweet 16. A few lines of lyrics sums it up; "Old days are fine, but are left so far behind.../The kids are alright, alright as they'll ever be/cos you will always be my Sweet 16". The instrumentation is softer, Billie Joe's vocals hold more of an innocent air to them, rather than the growling drawl the album has demonstrated so far, which makes a very nice change from everything prior to this point. Definitely a great song, which is well-worth listening to, even for non-fans of Green Day; simply because it tugs at the heart-strings. Not on the same level as Boulevard of Broken Dreams or Good Riddance (Time of your Life) in terms of popularity among non-fans, but it's definitely a magnificent piece of songwriting.

Time for Rusty James, a song that was originally entitled Last Gang in Town, giving a greater hint of the subject matter than the current title does. Rusty James is a step-up from Sweet 16 in terms of tempo, and also provides something more growling in terms of vocals again. The song is reminiscent of something off Green Day's last studio release; 21st Century Breakdown, even going so far as to reference the song American Eulogy from the aforementioned album in the lyrics, stating "I wanna ride on the divided", which has a striking similarity to the line "I wanna take a ride to the great divide". Overall, Rusty James is a great song, but somehow isn't as memorable or as striking as the songs that came prior, making a low point of the album for me. And yet, despite this, I won't be skipping it on play-throughs or removing it from my iPod, because it is a damn good song!

Oh Love, on the other hand, isn't so great. Admittedly it provides a nice ending point to the album, and as a lead-in song to ¡DOS! it may work better, but I can't judge it until I hear the next album in the trilogy. What I can say is that Oh Love never enthused me. I listened to it when it was released as a single and even then it wasn't so great. It works better within the context of the album than it did as a standalone single, but I'm quite confident that if there was one song to skip, it would be this one.

So there it is. 1 down, 2 to go. And this is a great album. Seriously, if you weren't considering buying it before at least go on YouTube and look up a couple of songs. It might just convince you.