Green Day announced in late summer of 2012 their plans to release three albums in succession and a documentary. As of December 11, 2012, their new album trilogy was fully released with ¡Tré!. To begin the last installment of their final album within the set, “Brutal Love” is a slow lamentation of the cruelties of the heart. The song comes to a heavier, more inherently Green Day fruition about two minutes in, but to that point, any listener believing that they are getting the classic Green Day of the trilogy’s first album, ¡Uno!, on ¡Tré! is off to a disappointing start. As the song finishes, an emphasized bass and strong drum act almost as a heart, uneager to beat through the lethargy of loss.
“Missing You” begins with Green Day lite, the traditional punk downstrokes on the guitar and the drum-driven transitions that seem to lack their normal oomph. The lyrics stand out for being unusually straightforward for Green Day. Slow and intelligible, it’s as if the band has begun to tire in their years of playing and are using this particular song as a breather. The most noticeable influence, however, is one of Green Day’s livelier songs from ¡Uno!, evident when they steal the riff from “Fell For You” just 20 seconds shy of an otherwise unique Green Day song. Long-worn guitar/bass tracks are exercised in “8th Avenue Serenade” in much the same way that “Missing You” can’t help but take from old material. The most tangible difference in the third track is one that is memorable and wonderful. The surfer pop embellishments add new dimension to that tired, overdone punk pattern prevalent in much of Green Day’s music. Already a star on a jaded album, “8th Avenue Serenade” leaves one wanting more for frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s sweet vocals weaving seamlessly with the yearning, sentimental lyrics (a welcome change from the vulgarity of ¡Dos¡).
Cat Stevens and Neil Diamond could easily have come up with much of “Drama Queen”, though the addition of the bass about a minute in gives the song a bit of an Elton John feel. This seems to be the most eclectic of ¡Tré!’s songs, incorporating elements of the Caesars’ cover of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Armstrong’s characteristic vocal strain is strangely appropriate in the midst of regretful lyrics.
The inactivity of the first track is mixed with the underlying depression of a late-life realization of chronic time waste to form “X-Kid.” A mourning ballad-esque punk song with lyrics that are soft and euphemistic in a seeming attempt to divert grief for just one minute longer, it is clear that the song was created as a means of processing loss. In an interview with Guitar World, Armstrong mentioned that “X-Kid” dealt with a friend’s suicide, though he would not go into detail for the melancholy of the subject. “Sex, Drugs, and Violence” picks up on what sounds like the same chord upon which “X-Kid,” finished making it seem like an only slightly cheerier continuation of the prior song. Armstrong goes back to his convoluted Ludwig Bemelmans-style rhymes and cheaty repetitions. The song fits nicely, but some of the tone and word placement almost suggest an attempt to combine the Alice Cooper “School’s Out” mentality with the sophistication of a Clash song.
“A Little Boy Named Train” begins to blur with much of Nimrod. By far Green Day’s most vapid song on ¡Tré!, it’s a wonder that it would be included along with some of the songs with more depth on the same album. This song contains nothing of any note, from the average drumming to the mediocre guitar strokes. The band’s trilogy may have been better off with one fewer song for a respectable total of 36.
Armstrong’s history resurrects itself with “Amanda,” written for an ex of his from the early days of Green Day. The frontman asserted to Guitar World’s Alan Di Perna that “I wrote the song ‘Amanda’ from a perspective of, ‘Okay, now that we’re grown-ups…’ She’s got her kids and her husband, and I’ve got my family. And it’s just asking the question, ‘How are you? What’s life like for you? This is what I’m up to’”. The song seems to counter itself and the line “I couldn’t be your man” with very masculine vocals and an emphasis on the low notes and bass drum.
“Walk Away” relies heavily on Armstrong’s voice with a small, slightly offset echo that accentuates the melody. For sheer musicality, ¡Tré!’s ninth track is one of the most developed. In many ways, it’s very genre-incongruent, sounding more like it should be featured on the Gilmore Girls soundtrack for the use of the voice as an instrument (“ooh-oo-ah”) and the easy-to-recall, repeated refrain. A complete about-face occurs going into “Dirty Rotten Bastards.” Sounding more like a demented Civil War rally song, one could liken it to “English Civil War” by the Clash, though, Green Day creates something new (the Clash, just modified). As (un)patriotic as the song starts out, the middle resembles something straight out of Dookie that no longer tries for the interesting originality of its first minutes. The Civil War tone comes back briefly toward the end to be ousted by something that acts more like it should be on American Idiot.
The song that named the tour, “99 Revolutions,” is inspired by the Occupy movement to which Armstrong feels connected, despite much of his adulthood being spent as a member of the 1%. In an interview, Armstrong told Rolling Stone that “We [Green Day] wanted to be part of [the Occupy movement] in some way. I thought it was about working people and where we come from. But Oakland got really complicated when the anarchists started coming in. I’m not into that – smashing the windows in a small business.” Regarding his economic conflict of interest, he told interviewer David Fricke, “I feel like a 99, but technically I’m a 1. You know, it was an easy song to write. I know that’s where I come from – the 99 – even though I can afford for my kids to go to a good college. It’s interesting: Cops are 99 percenters. Firemen are 99 percenters. That’s where the anarchists are confused. This is much broader than you think it is.”
The final song on ¡Tré! is “The Forgotten”, a return to the early genre-explorative ballads on the album. Elton John is clearly an influence, once again, though there is also a distinct Beatles “Carry That Weight” riff immediately adjacent to a couple strings sections that bear a striking resemblance to the Eagles’ “Desperado”. However disparate, the individual riffs and elements from other artists come together to create a really good song. As much depth as “A Little Boy Named Train” lacks, “The Forgotten” has (possibly threefold). It acts as the perfect finale to the melting pot album-trilogy that heralded itself with albums so multi-personality that only a band as large as Alabama Shakes should have been able to come up with it.
For all the attention ¡Uno! got, ¡Tré! is the hidden gem. All it takes is getting through the beginning of the album to really get into it. Any band that can pull off three albums in so short a span has achieved an amazing feat. Green Day just goes a step further by putting out three exceptional albums in so short a time. The ultimate end to a great trilogy, ¡Tré! is not to be missed.
