Do You Know Your Enemy?

Despite having a solid rotation going right now, I reached out via Facebook status update for new records to check out. I got some interesting results:

• Manchester Orchestra's Mean Everything to Nothing. Good but I just can't dive into it for whatever reason. I get through about half the record before searching for something different. Their label Favorite Gentlemen from Atlanta has some really cool bands like All Get Out, Right Away Great Captain and Winston Audio. They recently signed one of my favorite artists Kevin Devine and put Brother's Blood which I still have to get a copy off. If you don't know Kevin Devine you need to stop reading and listen to him now. It's great that the sponsored ad that comes up when you search for him on PureVolume is for drug and alcohol recovery, a topic he hits on throughout his discography.
• The new Queensryche record. Hmm, never listened to those guys but upon sneaking a listen on YouTube they might just be a little too old for me. That said I've been on a Kinks on Buddy Holly kick this entire week.
• Also included was the most recent Tom Morello record, Street Sweeper Social Scene, the Dear Hunter and the new Alkaline Trio. I will check those out!

What I wanted to talk about was what I've been absolutely hooked/amazed/dazzled over since I first got my hands around it: Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown. I am blown away by the lyrical content on this record. Right from the getgo Billie Joe Armstrong embarks on the most ambitous and artful punk rock record ever made, from both a musical and lyrical standpoint. The second track "21st Century Breakdown" is a hybrid autobiographical account of growing up and evolving, from being a kid from the poor side of town to a conscious, non-complacent pissed off citizen. He weaves from himself to his oldest son (a high school graduate in 2013), and his setting off in a world dominated by a tanking economy, religion-fueled segmentism and hatred and overwhelming uncertainty about the future of mankind.

"We are the class of the class of '13,
born in the era of humility,
we are the desperate in the decline,
raised by the bastards of 1969"

Singing about toiling and working while keeping a sense of both gloom and one day having the promise of having optimism, I get chills every time the third and fourth verses blast through my speakers. 21st Century Breakdown is a more complete and more compelling record than 2004's American Idiot. The single "Know Your Enemy" is a battle cry against complacency and the do-what-you're-told mantra. The themes of rage and love familar from "Jesus of Suburbia" are almost reborn in the characters of Christian and Gloria. You have this burn-it-to-the-ground-and-fuck-it-all type existing while being in love with Gloria, who throughout the record is like a beacon amongst the eulogy for hope.

"Gloria, Viva la Gloria,
send me your amnesty down to the broken hearted,
bring us the season we will always remember,
don't let the bonfires go out"

Two songs that really catch my ear are "East Jesus Nowhere" and "Peacemaker", both ultimately about religion. When I read that Wal-Mart refused to sell 21st Century Breakdown, I thought how any record that openly criticizes Christianity would get passed over by the world's largest retailer. You can buy guns at Wal-Mart, but not a Green Day record. I guess it doesn't fit in with Christian values.

There are songs that scream of Billie Joe Amstrong's love of British Invasion rock, namely "Restless Heart Syndrome". I initially didn't care for "the Static Age" but it's grown on me. It is damn near impossible to tune out the internet, television, radio, cell phones, e-mail, billboards, etc. , it's like a fight for our own consciousness.

It's easy to super dissect this record because it offers so much material. "American Eulogy" and "See the Light" are the perfect way to cap something so ambitious, so resonant when it seems like everyone around me lives and dies with the Dow Jones and what their company is cooking. It's easy to look past the fact that each and every one of us are alive, and if you don't want to put up with suit and tie/corporate bullshit than you don't have to. You are a soul and each moment is your time to push, test, embrace and embody whatever it is that makes you shake. I usually don't buy into records or messages/slogans whatever, but there's a genuine edge and anger to this record that is unmatched with anything else that exists today. This is a call to the underground and for the unwilling to wake the fuck up and be innovative. If you can't find a job, or you have no drive to buy into the ground rules of a homogenized workforce than go create and move society forward as a whole. Sure, the American economy could be kicking ass and suits would be earning millions of dollars, but literally at the end of the day what does that do for us as a society?