Novidades da Rolling Stone e MTV

Parece que já houve uns sortudos a ter direito a ouvir umas músicas do novo álbum. Este promete!! Aqui vos deixamos os artigos.

Rolling Stone:

First Listen: Green Day Revive Dramatic Political Punk on “21st Century Breakdown”
2/11/09, 6:10 pm EST

Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown won’t land in stores until May, but Rolling Stone scored an early listen to six tracks this afternoon — and confirmed that the trio will kick off a massive world tour of indoor arenas in July. A full in-the-studio report by David Fricke will hit newsstands in our next issue, but here’s a sneak peek at what Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt have been cooking up with legendary producer Butch Vig at the same California studio they recorded the Grammy-winning American Idiot, Warning, Insomniac and Dookie.

As previously reported, the 16-track album is broken into three acts — Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints, and Horseshoes and Handgrenades — and Dirnt told AP magazine that the songs “speak to each other the way the songs on [Bruce Springsteen’s] Born to Run speak to each other. I don’t know if you’d call it a ‘concept album,’ but there’s a thread that connects everything.” The songs are defiant, but also defiantly hopeful, referencing the unsettled political climate as well as more personal and generational turmoils. Its blend of claustrophobia, freedom and urgency is well illustrated by the album’s cover art, which depicts a tight shot of a young couple kissing against a graffiti-covered wall.

The title track quickly kicks into a familiar Green Day three-chord blast, but morphs into multiple movements like some of the more rock-opera-heavy numbers on American Idiot. “My generation is zero/I never made it as a working class hero,” Armstrong sings, making a reference to the John Lennon track the band covered in 2007. After a big drum breakdown, the song winds into a slower “Bohemian Rhapsody” moment. By contrast, “Know Your Enemy” is a straight-ahead rock song with a chanty “oh-way-oh-way” refrain. Opening powerfully like an AC/DC track, Cool drums furiously as Armstrong sings “Silence is the enemy so give me revolution.”

“Before the Lobotomy” is one of a handful of Breakdown tracks where Armstrong breaks into an uncharacteristically sweet singing voice and voyages into his limber upper register. Lyrics are answered by darts of guitar, and the band inserts pauses and breathing room between the music and vocals. At first Armstrong sings of “dreaming of another place and time where my family are from” but as the song progresses he’s pointing a finger at “Charlatans of lost memories like the end of the century.”

“March of the Dogs” is the most punky and overtly political of the six tracks. Built on big punches of guitar and classic shout and response vocals, Armstrong spits, “I want to know who’s allowed to breed/All the dogs who never learned to read/Missionaries, politicians/And the cops of a new religion.” It’s a biting indictment of contemporary religion that starts intense and never lets up, even for a marching-drum bridge.

Armstrong’s serene vocals reappear on the mid-tempo rocker “Restless Heart Syndrome.” Returning to the line “know your enemy,” Billie Joe advises, “Know what ails you/impales you… you’re a victim of the system.” The track takes a dramatic kick into its loud section, and its neat four-chord structure turns on a minor note. And “21 Guns” has a dash of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to it — the track opens slowly with acoustic guitar, adding piano and other instruments until it opens up into a big, lush, super-melodic chorus. “Lay down your arms, give up the fight,” Armstrong croons. “Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I.” After a quick guitar solo and what sounds like a few pretty lines of harmonium, the song concludes with a hopeful finality.

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MTV:

Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown: We Preview The New AlbumIt sounds like the band are trying to match the big sound and success of American Idiot.
By James Montgomery

How does one follow up a multimillion-selling, world-uniting, career-rejuvenating, award-winning, status-sealing album? Well, if you're Green Day, you do it with hooks, ambition and sheer bombast.

On Wednesday night, MTV News heard six tracks from 21st Century Breakdown, GD's follow-up to 2005's landmark American Idiot, due out in May. And though the songs were rough mixes (frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and producer Butch Vig did said mixing, we were informed), the songs packed a wallop — both sonically and lyrically — which is proof that, rather than hide from the prospect of trying to match Idiot's success, Green Day intend to face it head on.

The title track — a snippet of which can currently be heard on the band's official site — opens with keening acoustic strums and a bright organ line, recalling the first measures of the Who's "Baba O'Riley." Armstrong's voice is heard next, bleating "My generation is zero/ Never made it as a working class hero" (echoing their 2007 cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero"), then the song takes off on a multi-sectional sprint, featuring big, clean guitar chords (played windmill-style, à la Pete Townshend, one imagines) one minute, cacophonous drum breakdowns the next — not to mention a "We Are the Champions"-style interlude. Armstrong yelps couplets like, "Video games of the towers' fall/ Homeland Security can kill us all," before the whole song comes crashing to a close with him singing, "Oh dream, America, dream ... / Oh, scream, America, scream." Needless to say, it's a lot packed into just five minutes and change.

"Know Your Enemy" was the next song, a genuine fist-pumper that starts with pounding drums and builds on some muscle chords. "Violence is an energy/ Against the enemy," Armstrong yells, as the track works its way through various airtight stops and starts.

"Before the Lobotomy" begins with some carefully picked acoustic guitar, as Armstrong ruminates on his past ("Dreaming, I was only dreaming/ Of another place and time where my family's from") and explores a newly discovered upper register. It's all very pretty, but eventually falls away, only to come pounding back with huge drums and more of those windmill guitars, as Armstrong growls about "whiskey shots and cheap cigarettes." It's an earful, to be certain.

"March of the Dogs" kicks off with a swaggering guitar line, with Armstrong mentioning "sacrificial suicides." It then showcases Mike Dirnt's walking bassline, augmented with some handclaps. It builds to some interlocking guitars, then stop-starts as Armstrong whispers (Zack de la Rocha-style), "Don't test me ... second guess me ... protest me." Then the song sprints out the door with a guitar section reminiscent of Dick Dale's "Misirlou." All in less than four-and-a-half minutes.

"Restless Heart Syndrome" starts with piano, and Armstrong sings "I've got a really bad disease/ It's got me begging on my hands and knees." He keeps going — again reaching that upper register — as the song picks up a swing tempo, eventually interrupted by a buzz-saw guitar section and some lock-step bass and drums. "21 Guns" — which, if it's not Breakdown's final song, really ought to be — is a cell-phones-in-the-air anthem, starting with more sharply strummed acoustic guitars. It builds on a piano line to the chorus, which has Armstrong bleating, "One, 21 guns, lay down your arms/ Give up the fight ... / One, 21 guns/ Throw up your arms into the sky/ You and I," as the rest of the band backs him with harmonized, "Aaaah-aaaahs." The song ends with piano and ringing feedback.

Green Day cover a lot of ground, and they do it with a style and swagger that's admirable, especially given all the expectations weighing on them this time around. Taking cues from classic rock, going for the massive once again, they're not backing down from the fight. Apparently, Breakdown will feature 16 songs. It's not known whether they all pack as much punch as the ones we heard last night, but we can't wait to find out.