Breakdown Trumps Even Idiot

After Green Day’s multi-platinum American Idiot, anticipation is off the charts for today’s release of 21st Century Breakdown. And it doesn’t disappoint. Here’s what critics are saying:

• It’s “so masterful and confident it makes Idiot seem like a warm-up,” says Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone. Green Day’s become “the sort of band that isn't supposed to exist anymore—raging with heart-on-sleeve passion, willing to risk falling on their faces with a grand statement.”

• The plot’s less forced this time, and if this is what it takes to produce such ambitious music, “then bring on the fiction workshops,” writes Ann Powers of the LA Times.
• “Is this the same guy the world met in a video where he sat on a sofa singing about smoking pot and jerking off?” marvels Kyle Ryan of the Onion AV Club. In between the bread-and-butter pop-punk, he says, Breakdown is ambitious, bold and fun.

(More Green Day stories.)