Green Day hit it big with Dookie, their third album and first on a major label. The album produced a slew of hits, the biggest being Longview, Basketcase, and When I Come Around. They were ubiquitous then, and they still get heavy play a decade later. Yes, Dookie put Green Day on top of the rock world, and christened them the leaders of the pop-punk movement.
And of course, when a rock band - especially a punk rock band - hits it big, there's going to be backlash from hometown fans who now consider the band a sellout. Green Day returned home to California to find that the fans who were with them from the start didn't want the megastars back. Eventually, Green Day would say, "F them. We'll make whatever kind of music we want - even if it's acoustic." But first, they attempted to regain some cred by releasing an album of tight, solid punk, even if it meant not matching the sales of their previous record. Their "we can make straight-up punk whenever we want" album was called Insomniac.
The album contains 14 tracks - nothing hidden and nothing too long. Most clock in between two and three minutes, with the lengthiest at 3:35. Just about every song is fast, the exception being Brain Stew, a methodically-paced, illness-themed number with a guitar riff so cool Papa Roach had to rip it off to have their biggest hit. Everything else shows Green Day at their speediest, making their point, then moving on. This causes some songs to get lost in the mix, but despite a small lack of standouts, every track is quality.
The biggest standout, for me at least, is Geek Stink Breath, the album's lead single. They deliver cleverly phrased drug references in a way that's easy to sing along to, yet the song is pretty heavy and should be played at high volume. It may not be one of their most popular hits, but it is one of their best. Even more underrated is Walking Contradiction, a much too short-lived hit. This track closes the album in such catchy fashion, you'll have to listen to it again before taking the disc out.
Stuart and the Ave. is also done in classic Green Day fashion: fast and catchy. The chorus is hard not to sing along with: "Destiny is dead/ In the hand of bad luck/ Before it might have made some sense/ But now it's all f*cked up." 86 is another favorite of mine. It's still a frantically fast punk song, but it has a touch of epicness, which resembles Uptight, one of Nimrod's finest.
The music may be catchy (even the ultra-hyper Jaded), but they retain plenty of their attitude throughout, mainly as they sing about society's losers. Brat is about a guy just waiting for his folks to die so he can get his inheritence. Tight Wad Hill, like Geek Stink Breath, sings about someone wasting his life on drugs: "Drugstore hooligan/ Another white trash mannequin/ On display to rot up on the hill." Lots of other tracks display anger at the wealthy (Stuck With Me), a failed relationship (Stuart and the Ave.), and even themselves: "I perfected the science of the idiot" (Armatage Shanks).
Musically, Insomniac doesn't stray from the formula too often, so there aren't as many standouts as on other albums. Even so, every song is very good on its own, making this a wholey strong album. As a follow-up to Dookie, Insomniac may not have been a huge success, but when looked at simply as a piece of the Green Day catalog, it stands up as an essential. And I think Green Day would agree that that's worth more than sales.
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