Not that the band need, or even want it, and as a reviewer, and fan, it is not such a hard job to use my own knowledge and ears, but I enjoy others views and can always learn something new. Well learn something new I did, when I read a comment comparing the trio’s latest single to the sk8er boi queen herself, Avril Lavigne. If ever a comment succeeded to make a music fan’s blood boil, this is the one, and no doubt Greenday fans everywhere will feel anger and passion rising to a level normally emanated by the band and their songs. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is no acception, despite being a melodic punk offering, sounding like the band are overwhelmed with emotion, and like they are paying an ode to loneliness or a biting ode to an ex lover on first listen. Have they gone soft I hear you ask? No pull yourselves together and worry not, whilst Avril is wondering which pair of jeans to wear on her date, our favourite pop punk trio have more pressing issues, and in their second single tackle the issues of alienation of the public by the government. “I walk a lonely road the only one that I have ever known Don’t know where it goes, but it’s only me and I walk alone” Opening with sparse and eerie guitar chugs, which meet tender acoustic guitars, before Billie Joe’s strangely melancholic, but ever-enthusiastic vocals take the lead, providing the icing on the cake to a haunting track. The electro fuelled choruses are enough to reel you in and get you singing along, whilst the hairs on your back stillstand on end from the mysterious and meaningful verses. Lyrically and musically passionate and no less so than it’s previous politically fuelled single “American Idiot.” Katherine Tomlinson http://www.greenday.com
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