My feelings for Green Day are kind of lukewarm. While they have always made solid music and kept pretty consistent to their style, they very rarely diverged from the fast and hard formula.

You could always expect energetic rock anthems and even a few neat hooks here and there. But even when they did experiment a bit on the softer side of things with Nimrod, the results were iffy ("Last Ride In") and much as I hate to admit it, I never thought "Time Of Your Life" was all that great. Unexpected, yeah, but not great.

Probably my biggest mistake was passing over Warning. I don't have the first clue what that album is like, but I do know I liked the singles "Minority" and especially "Warning".

Now I listen to American Idiot, and I wonder... is Green Day is starting to sound more like pop, or is pop starting to sound more like Green Day? I have constant flashbacks of Fountains of Wayne's album Welcome Interstate Managers. I wonder how it is that a Green Day album could sound so.. passionate.

Well it beats me. One of the most noticeable improvements of American Idiot is right there in the voice of leading man Billie Joe Armstrong. He has become an outstanding singer this last decade. You'll find that he's not hiding as much behind the guitars these days. He's not deliberately stretching syllables out and slurring them together. Okay maybe occasionally you'll hear him dropping a "Shhhhhhhhit" here and there, but it has become rare.

What pleases me the most is that in the place of all that nonstop guitar shredding and 8-words-become-1 verbiage, there is actually quality music here that flows like a cohesive, honest-to-God work of art. The lyrics of certain songs are always referring to each other as if they were all part of the same great big world. This is not Green Day going soft on us, this is Green Day learning to rock out like they mean it. As ugly as that cover is, I think it says something about the album. It's got a lot of heart, and that heart is about to explode all over the place.

Lest you think there is no old-school Green Day to be found, allow me to put that worry to rest. "She's a Rebel" and "St. Jimmy" (whose ending is absolutely classic) are fast-paced three-chord rockers that would not have sounded out of place on Insomniac or Nimrod. "Letterbomb" has a chorus that mimicks the former's "#86". There are also eclectic tracks like "Holiday" which take familiar hooks and make you feel like you're still just hearing them for the first time.

"Extraordinary Girl" is that one that always grabs me. Its melody is that left-of-center brand of catchy that has become all but impossible to pull off without sounding terribly derivative. While I think I might have heard this somewhere before, heck if I can remember where. All I know is, Green Day wear it well.

American Idiot is, compared to previous Green Day albums, a tad slower. Not a lot, but enough that you get a good taste of what Green Day are actually capable of down there. Their previous slow to mid-tempo songs, like "Brain Stew" and "When I Come Around", were rarely ever sad. "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" had me from the first ten seconds 'cause it actually feels sad. Can you even imagine Billie Joe Armstrong singing lines like this?

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

But if you wanna talk about ballads, just check out the extraordinary "Wake Me Up When September Ends". It turns from a pretty acoustic number into an emotionally driving rock ballad with sweet drumming. It's not too terribly original, but like so much of this album, it sounds awesome hearing Green Day do it! "Are We The Waiting" is another ballad that sounds like a more ardent version of P.O.D.'s "Youth Of The Nation".

The reason people will talk about this album, though, is its ambitious five-part bookends. With one song between each and the end/beginning of the album, these two monsters are some of the most insanely fun listening you'll ever find.

The first, "Jesus of Suburbia" starts out as inconspicuously as possible, as if it were just another song, and then before you know it, the transformations start popping up. There is at least one point in the song where it sounds eerily similar to "Summer of '69" by Bryan Adams, but I love the repeating HEY! in the background. The lyrics flow beautifully. I don't know why, but this passage always jumps out at me, from part two, "City of the Damned" (Yeah, all five parts have names!)

I read the graffiti in the bathroom stall
Like the Holy Scriptures in a shopping mall
And so it seemed to confess it didn't say much
But it only confirmed that
The center of the Earth is the end of the world
And I could really care less.

The other 9-minute monster is called "Homecoming", and its first segment is my favorite moment on the entire album. It's like some anthemic parade march, and it's so not them, yet again, they prove it to us. Hey, we can do that too! Check out the way those drums blast in!!! Here, we're catching up on St. Jimmy, whose name appears here and there throughout the album like a story in some indecipherable David Lynch movie. This one even goes so far as to give drummer Tre Cool a chance at his own part in the brief punkish segment "Rock And Roll Girlfriend". If this ain't fun, I don't know what is.

At the very end, "Whatshername" is a simple little song. It's sort of like mellow U2 meets mellow Everclear, with a loud/quiet segment that reminds me of the Foo Fighters' "Exhausted". If there's one thing Green Day have always been reliable at, it's giving us a good last song.

Quiet moments are scarce here; most songs blend right into each other, often even staying in the same key from one to the next. The 9-minute epics aren't the only transformer tunes, either! It almost feels as if the entire thing is one great big 57-minute song.

2004 hasn't been the greatest year for music, but even the worst years have their shining moments. American Idiot is one of them.

Recommended: Yes

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