Billie, Tre and Mike put their 2012 meltdown behind them on an album as strong as anything they’ve done since ‘American Idiot’ As falls from grace go, Green Day’s 2012 chastening was one for the ages: hubristic overreaching, self-inflicted exhaustion, an excruciating public meltdown leading to a raft of postponed tour dates and an entire trilogy of underwhelming albums that laid bare the scorched-earth extent of their burnout. What lit the match, however, may have been nothing more than a misguided surfeit of ambition. After two decades at the top of their game, Green Day seemed to believe it was no longer enough to simply be a band that released albums; they had to be a behemoth that made statements, even ones as unwieldy and confounding as ‘¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré!’. Every great downfall deserves a redemption, however, and with ‘Revolution Radio’, Green Day now have theirs. There’ll be no Broadway musicals made of this album, no think-pieces devoted to unpicking its politics or meaning, but as a simple collection of songs, it’s as strong as anything they’ve come up with since 2004’s ‘American Idiot’. Thematically, Billie Joe Armstrong has said the album is about making sense of our chaotic times, […]