Well dear reader, the day that had Green Day fans worldwide biting their nails is upon us. Father of All Motherfuckers (we’ll call it by its abbreviated name from here on out) is here. The rollout for this album has been pretty strange, to say the least. The world was first introduced to the concept of Father of All… when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong shared the hideous album art on Instagram, accompanied by an incoherent rant about how Green Day was going to give rock music its edge back, or something like that. Following shortly after, we heard the first single, “Father of All…,” which confused fans, to say the least. It was a raw, raging, garage rock tune with plenty of earworm potential, but it barely sounded like Green Day. And the over-the-top filtering on Armstrong’s weird falsetto vocals certainly didn’t help. While I didn’t initially hate this song the way many did, I got sick of it pretty quickly after the band completely beat it to death with every single public appearance they made. Before the album released, we got two more singles, the entirely forgettable “Fire, Ready, Aim,” and the weird but infectious “Oh Yeah!” (my personal favorite of the three). This first sampling of music made many Green Day fans, including myself, nervous about this release. I know not every Green Day album has been a masterpiece, but I can honestly say I don’t think they’ve ever made a BAD album. So would Father of All… be the first real blemish on the face of Green Day’s discography?
Everybody can take a deep sigh of relief, because this album is actually pretty good. I was expecting it to be mediocre at best, but I can honestly say that the first singles are not a fair representation of the album Green Day ended up giving us. Even though the weird, raw, garage rock style is consistently present throughout the duration of the album, the writing and performance of many of these songs are unmistakably classic Green Day, something that I think is more than welcome after the set of singles we got. The best examples are “Sugar Youth,” an anthem to the party life, complete with Green Day’s classic power chording structure, and Armstrong’s infectious hook writing, and “Graffitia,” a fist-pumping, populist anthem that could be straight off of 21st Century Breakdown, and my favorite Green Day song from the last decade.
As I mentioned earlier, “Oh Yeah!” is my favorite of the first three singles to come from Father of All… It’s an intense, chest pounding anthem that’s impossible to sit still through. It samples a segment of “Do You Wanna Touch Me” by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, which is a cover of a song by rock legend and convicted child molester Gary Glitter. Understandably, this was met with some backlash, prompting the band to donate the royalties from the song’s sales to International Justice Mission and Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which was a really cool move on their part.
Another favorite of mine is “Stab You in the Heart,” an upbeat, 12 bar blues smash, which lifts its main guitar riff, and overall song structure, from ¡Dos!’s “Fuck Time.” I’ll let this slide, because this song does it better in every imaginable way, and also, most Green Day fans have likely purged their memories of that drivel anyway. While we’re on the topic of ¡Dos!, “Meet Me On The Roof” bears some resemblance to “Stray Heart,” both in its infectious one-two swing beat, and its endearing, quirky love story. In many ways, this is the Green Day garage rock album that ¡Dos! should’ve been.
The biggest weak spot of this album is the lyrics. Apart from the aforementioned lyrical contents of “Graffitia” and “Meet Me on the Roof,” this album is pretty mindless and juvenile. And while nothing on here achieves ¡Uno! levels of cringe, “I Was a Teenage Teenager” and “Junkies on a High” certainly don’t represent the most thoughtful writing to come from this band. Overall though, this is forgivable on a garage rock album where the band is clearly just trying to have some fun. Apart from this, we also have some pretty glaring production issues. For the playing style the band went for on this album, the production is far too clean. They seem to try to dirty up the sound with really ugly fuzzed out guitar tones. And while these overall are creative choices that I didn’t happen to care for, objectively speaking, Armstrong’s vocals sit unacceptably low in the mix.
Father of All… is far from a perfect album, but it’s also far from being the mess that everybody thought it would be. After spending two decades constantly trying to outdo themselves, Green Day threw everybody for a loop with an album that seems to exists for the sole purpose of goofing off and having some fun. And it honestly worked. In recent years, Green Day have failed to excite me more often than not. From releasing ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tre! when they simply didn’t have enough worthwhile material to fill three whole albums, to overcorrecting and playing it too safe with Revolution Radio, it’s clear that Green Day had hit a peak that they just couldn’t top. So perhaps, the logical next step was to quit trying to outdo themselves and just have some fun, while still being unique and experimenting. And that’s exactly what they’ve done here. Father of All… isn’t without its flaws, but this is the most I’ve enjoyed a Green Day album since 21st Century Breakdown.
Score: 7/10
Favorite Song(s): Graffitia, Sugar Youth, Oh Yeah!, Stab You in the Heart
Least Favorite Song(s): Fire, Ready, Aim; Junkies on a High
Phil Klinker Music Reviews 