Saviours is the fourteenth album from long-standing Californian punk rockers Green Day and the follow up to 2020’s Father Of All Motherfuckers. Reuniting with Rob Cavallo, with whom the band recorded some of their most revered efforts including Dookie and American Idiot, the album mixes harder-edged punk rockers with some of the band’s poppiest fare to date, even nodding to Weezer at times, making for an engaging album that throws out some incisive, MAGA-baiting lyrics even as it’s wooing you with its sneaky doo-wop harmonies.
The album kicks off with The American Dream Is Killing Me – a track that harks straight back to American Idiot with its sneering lyric and scattershot influences – the latter ranging from the Irish folk elements of the introduction to a surprise digression into Beatle’s territory. The album continues to rattle the sabre with the blisteringly on-point Look Ma No Brains, a song that should be adopted as an anthem by a good portion of X users. Delivered as a straight-forward punk rocker, it has an irresistible energy, the band racing through middle age with a middle finger raised and the same don’t-give-a-fuck attitude that brough them to fame in the first place. Perhaps more surprising is Bobby Sox, the greatest song Weezer never wrote, with its winsome lead vocal and doo-wop backing. Still crunchy as hell, it’s a near-perfect synthesis of pop and punk, and you’ll surely curse the band when you find the song rearing its head at the most inopportune moments.
If Bobby Sox is a gloriously addictive little earworm, One Eyed Bastard is a genuine, arena-sized anthem delivered with wide-eyed panache and immensely enjoyable as a result. The pace slows briefly as Billy Joe plays the troubled troubadour on the intro to Dilemma, only for the band to crash the party, once again recapturing the brilliant mix of power and poignancy that made American Idiot so successful. No such subtlety is employed, however, with the rampant 1981, a hook-laden rocker that practically effervesces. It’s then, with the adrenaline still racing through the listener’s veins that the band casually toss out massive ballad Goodnight Adeline, as if such things are the easiest thing in the world to write.
Having allowed the listener a moment to draw breath, the band are back to their arena-toppling best with Coma City, a full-tilt blast of splenetic energy that hides the bitterness of the lyrics beneath a sun-kissed melody. The band’s sneaky love of AC/DC is laid bare on Corvette Summer, a riff-powered monster complete with cowbell, while the spirit of Weezer returns on the lovely, 50’s-themed Suzie Chapstick. The sense of nostalgia lingers on Strange Days Are Here To Stay, a tightly-wound punk rocker which, with its palm muted riffing and rock solid beats, offers up another set of lyrics that feel alarmingly prescient. Living In The ‘20s is harder edged still, the reference to supermarket shootings particularly cutting, especially given that such things just seem to be an accepted part of life in this troubled decade. It sits uneasily next to the heartfelt acoustic track Father To A Son, which highlights the vulnerability of parenthood in such febrile times.
Wrapping up the album, the title track seems to suggest a glimmer of light up ahead, for all the darkness of the modern world, before Fancy Sauce rewrites the central conceit of Basket Case, the protagonist no langer questioning their mental state, but simply accepting that they’ve lost the plot along with everybody else. It provides the album with an immensely satisfying musical finale, the clever final words: “we all die young someday”, suggesting that Green Day have no intention of heading gracefully into old age just yet.
With incisive lyrics, hook-laden melodies, and a rock-solid production job from Rob Cavallo (who knows how to make these guys sound great), Saviors is one of Green Day’s strongest efforts in years. From frenetic, three-minute blasts to arena-crushing anthems, via ballads and acoustic pieces, this one has it all and, for forty-six minutes, it’s a pleasure to find yourself in the band’s company once more. Over nearly four decades, Green Day have provided a soundtrack to people’s lives because, despite all their success, they have remained empathetic to the daily struggles of their fan base. As such, their songs not only boast great hooks, but they’re endlessly relatable, and it is this that makes Saviors such an absolute riot. Album of the year territory? Quite probably. 9/10
