Green Day’s “Saviors” - A Textbook for the 2020s
A return to form and their most mature record
Sub-genres aside, Green Day can be considered one of the elder statesmen of punk. The Bay Area punk rockers have been in the game for 35 years and are marginally responsible for bringing the DIY aesthetics of punk into the mainstream forefront. Albums like Dookie, Insomniac, and Nimrod established Green Day’s unique sound of power chords, melodic vocals, and fast tempos. Instead of the group growing with only its core audience, they crossed a musical threshold with the politically infused punk rock operas American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. The success of these specific albums gave Green Day a second lease on life, crossing a threshold with a new generation of fans.
Despite their beloved stature, over the past decade Green Day’s catalog has been hit or miss. Instead of making one solid album, the triple album trilogy of Uno, Dos, and Tre in 2012 was a shallow exercise in prolificity. 2016’s Revolution Radio managed to pick up the speed, but the promising streak halted at Father of All Motherf*****s in 2020. The album was a regression, with the band embracing the sound of garage rock, a genre they had no business tapping into. Could it have been a shallow contractual obligation since Green Day was parting ways with Warner/Reprise? It will most likely go down as a part of their history they’ll fight tooth and nail to forget about since no songs lasted in the live set. On a brighter note, renegotiated contracts enabled the band to remain on the roster with the release of their newest album, Saviors. After a head-scratching detour with their previous album, Green Day finally got it together with an album that resembles a solid return to form.
The opening track, “The American Dream is Killing Me,” flaunts Green Day’s compositional craftsmanship with an anthemic pre-chorus and an unexpected orchestral break in the bridge. “Look Ma, No Brains!,” “1981,” and “Strange Days Are Here to Stay” are prime examples of the group's signature sound due to their franticity and exceptional harmonies from Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt. The uplifting chord sequence of “Bobby Sox” juxtaposes one of Billie Joe’s edgiest vocal deliveries during the chorus. Between the main descending riff and “badda-bing-badda-boom” gang vocal hook, “One Eyed Bastard” is a song with an undeniable element of swagger. “Dilemma” and its drop D tuning offers plenty of grit. The syncopated chorus of “Goodnight Adeline” is reminiscent of the one found on Green Day's 2009 gem, "21 Guns."
Flipping the album over to Side 2, one cannot help but sit at the edge of his or her seat listening to the intensifying guitar leads of “Coma City” as it progresses to a phasing climax. Tre Cool’s extra percussion flourishes of cowbell and tambourine are nice touches to the classic rock-sounding “Corvette Summer” and “Living in the 20s.” The toned-down melodic tendencies of “Suzie Chapstick” are best described in a mere two words: ear candy. Saviors’ breath catcher is “Father to a Son,” a touching acoustic ballad with a glorious orchestral arrangement. The title track is a mid-paced driver with Billie Joe’s trademark megaphoned vocals. “Fancy Sauce” winds the album down in a swaying fashion.
Billie Joe Armstrong was 20 years old when he faced the impending doom of early adulthood in his earlier work. Saviors’ lyrical content resembles that person at 50 with the same amount of angst as before. Mentions of mental illness, mass shootings, the polarizing effects of the media, the fentanyl crisis, and addiction paint a bleak picture of living in modern-day America. That same sense of hopelessness 30 years prior still finds itself in “Look Ma, No Brains!” There is a plea for simplicity in “Corvette Summer,” where all the protagonist wants is his records to make the pain disappear. On a lighter note, tracks like “The American Dream is Killing Me” and “Suzie Chapstick” can only exist as products of the 21st century, with respective mentions of social media conglomerates TikTok and Instagram. The lyrics of Saviors are bound to be adaptable to a textbook in 30 years, and it will show future generations all they need to know about what went on in the 2020s.
The front cover of Saviors features a manipulated photo of a youthful stone-throwing Paul Kennedy during the Troubles in Ireland. Polaroid portraits of each of the band members don the back cover jacket. Instead of utilizing printed inner sleeves or inserts, Saviors includes a double-sided poster of band photos and lyrics, an old-school return to one of my favorite facets of old-school vinyl packaging. With all the money WMG has to generate so many collectible colored vinyl variants, one would think they’d use poly-lined inner sleeves at the bare minimum instead of paper; they’ll never learn! Nonetheless, the indie exclusive pink/black split-colored vinyl perfectly fits the color scheme of the album artwork.
The vinyl pressing of Saviors is a missed opportunity for the music to shine at its deserved itensity. Green Day’s albums are generally well recorded and sound huge, so it is not due to Sterling Sound’s Ted Jensen or Joe Nino-Hernes. Cramming 7-8 songs on a given side of vinyl in this day and age is inexcusable. Double albums are almost accepted to be the norm for most vinyl pressings of modern artists’ new albums. The moments when my speakers should’ve exploded with sound instead sounded congested. Songs with more intricate arrangements, such as “Father to a Son,” have lost nuances. Spreading the album across three sides with a gimmicky fourth side etching would’ve sufficed.
With 15 tracks clocking in at 46 minutes, Saviors offers a lot to feast your ears on. The rapid-fire speed of how fast the songs come and go harks back to the flow of albums like Kerplunk and Dookie. However, the songs’ compositional strengths lie in the maturities Green Day discovered on American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown, minus the confinements of sticking to a punk rock opera narrative formula. Saviors manages to ride comfortably in the middle, making it an album for fans on both ends of the spectrum to enjoy.
