Nimrod

10/14/1997 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Bill Holdship

You've gotta give a band credit for growing, especially in this formula-fueled era. And if Insomniac--Green Day's followup to their phenomenal Dookie LP--was simply a holding pattern, then Nimrod reveals a band now comfortable enough with itself to experiment a little and change. Not that Billie Joe Armstrong doesn't still write amazing little pop melodies that stand alongside some of rock's all-time greatest; songs like "Redundant," "Scattered," "Worry Rock"--heck, a majority of the tracks here--feature powerful hooks that wrap themselves around you from the first listen on.

But if music is rhythm as well as melody, then the band has definitely evolved in that department, forsaking the Ramones-like "1-2-3-4!" attack of their previous four albums (though not totally, as one listen to the hardcore-ish "Platypus [I Hate You]," "Take Back" and "Jinx" will illustrate) for some more traditional rock time signatures. For instance, "Hitchin' A Ride," the LP's first single, is built on an opening riff straight out of the Stray Cats' songbook, while the aforementioned "Worry Rock" wouldn't have sounded that out of place next to the Dave Clark Five on an AM transistor radio in the mid-'60s. The gorgeous "Last Ride In," an instrumental track, is pure spaghetti Western--but the guys really go for broke on two tracks near the album's end: "King For A Day" (a little ditty about a cross-dresser), which merges Dixieland-sounding brass with almost British music hall stylings, and "Good Riddance," an acoustic ballad featuring (dare I say it?) Beatlesque strings.

Green Day seem to understand that punk has to change if it's going to maintain any grasp on the musical zeitgeist, and Nimrod definitely illustrates one direction in which it could go. Funny that during the Insomniac tour, Green Day were being labeled nothing more than a "teenybopper" trend by a lot of rock hacks. Anyone who still believes that after hearing Nimrod is either a "Prosthetic Head" or a nimrod themselves.