'21st Century Breakdown' by Green Day

Green Day

21st Century Breakdown

Reprise

* * * 1/2

One of the many very sticky songs from Green Day's new opus, "21st Century Breakdown," got stuck in my head the other day. It was "The Static Age," a bouncy little number named after a rant by New Jersey punk elders the Misfits. Green Day's ditty doesn't sound at all like that other "Static Age." Instead of being sludgy and hard, it's peppy, with a big kick-drum beat, machine-gun guitars and a melody that . . . reminded me of something.

What was it? Perhaps one of the inspirations the band and its critical supporters have mentioned -- like Queen, Bruce Springsteen or the Who? Or maybe the original writers of the Green Day playbook, the Beatles?

No, it was Buddy Holly. The looping melody of "The Static Age" brought me back to the hiccup-prone rocker's 1957 song "Everyday."

This sonic link to the dawn of rock 'n' roll provides a useful corrective to the gravity with which some fans have greeted Green Day's maturation into the concept-loving champions of album-oriented rock. When Holly was first crafting his relentlessly inventive songs, the divide hadn't yet arisen between good-time music and stuff that qualified as art. Creativity was something that happened in your basement, it was a big plus if it sold, and it didn't need to trumpet itself: Rock 'n' roll's innovations were bright, shiny and easy to love.

Punk, the movement to which Green Day still claims fealty, had many agendas, but one was to strip away pretenses and get back to the snappy, confrontational fun of early rock. That attitude is what made Green Day a good band in the first place, and it's still what puts it a cut above the rest with an album that will surely earn its spot among the top rock offerings of the year.

The story line that unites the 18 songs on "21st Century Breakdown" is easier to grasp than the one on "American Idiot," the award-winning 2004 release that turned this trio of smart alecks into a bona-fide classic-punk band. It's also less obtrusive.

On "Idiot," Billie Joe Armstrong and his mates struggled to find the form that would suit their big ideas. The result was an album with some outstanding songs and some awkward, clunky ones. The general project hangs together much better on "Breakdown." Its musical and lyrical themes recur without fuss, and each track has its own strong identity that speaks to but isn't weighed down by the larger (and beneficially looser) narrative.