Leave it to the punk trio Green Day to give a follow-up “non-hit” album on the heels of its greatest hits album.
The band, with members Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt, released Shenanigans this month to complement last year’s International Superhits. Shenanigans is a compilation of lesser-known Green Day songs off post-Dookie albums, B-sides, covers and even a soundtrack song from “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”
Shenanigans is definitely a sour-sweet bite of this pop-punk band that exploded in the mid-90s. While Green Day is on the road with Blink 182 on the “Pop Disaster Tour” this summer, fans will appreciate this compilation to tide them over until the next fresh album is doled out.
The album includes the unreleased song “Ha Ha You’re Dead,” which is the best song off Shenanigans. It’s Green Day punk to the core, the trashy rhythms laced with Armstrong’s askew vocals.
All the songs are reminiscent of the band’s growth since Dookie smashed the band’s underground popularity to pieces and was solidified as a chart dominator. The emergence of Green Day in the mid-90s fell in step with a new punk revival when other newcomers such as The Offspring and Rancid hit the scene. Green Day and The Offspring were, and still are, the kings of newer punk.
Now old-school punk is clashing with pop-punk with the advent of bands such as The Strokes, but Green Day remains dominant throughout it all. Shenanigans only proves as much. The album includes covers of the Kink’s “Tired of Waiting For You” and the Ramones’ “Outsider,” both done with a Green Day thrasher tasteful air. The band makes the songs their own, while paying a heady tribute to the punk legends.
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The B-side “Don’t Want To Fall In Love,” is a head-bobbing, discordant punk song that takes one right back to Green Day in its earliest days. The whole album is a Green Day time bomb, ticking away in all the right places. The instrumental “Espionage” off the “Austin Powers” soundtrack also has great kick to it.
The old-school Green Day-type songs make one a little reminiscent of what the band was before the band’s evolution from simple punk pioneers to the older, more melodic band. With hits such as “Time of Your Life (Good Riddance)” and the 2000 album Warning, a more mature Green Day emerges, proving that the band can still knock heads with any new punkers screaming onto the scene.
Armstrong is taking his father/punk rocker role easily in stride and while the songs get more introspective, don’t expect these three guys to get quieter or less in-your-face. They are a punk-rock classic in the works and are skipping mischievously through punk’s newest revival. Expect more of the same when the boys head back to the studio at the summer’s end.
