Dos!

Everything about ¡Dos! is a step up from the last go-round, as if the previous LP was a mere dress rehearsal for the proper show,

It's great to hear them back on home turf, stripped of their last two records' strained conceptualism, instead just spitting out random, bratty nuggets about uncomplicated things like feeling horny and outrageous women. [Jan 2013, p.94]

Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool harness the sound of immolating, teenage-wasteland lust for an album with a distinct sense of life coming off the rails.

Dos! is a reliably fun, garagey treat--and should be viewed as no more than that.

Scratch the party-till-you-puke surface and there's plenty of minor-key darkness lurking below.

Some songs' lyrics feel a bit too rote ("Makeout Party," "Lazy Bones") but that's when you realize Green Day never really had all that much to say in the first place, and they function at their best with hook-filled songs that are typically three minutes or less. Luckily for us, ¡Dos! is full of those tracks, and is definitely the highlight of the band's ongoing trilogy to date.

Twenty years on from "Kerplunk," Green Day couldn't possibly replicate its early urgency, but the band can manage to keep its sound nicely unhinged.

It's an excellent Green Day album--one of its best--a catchy, revealing work that surprises with its willingness to explore ideas that the band members may not have invented, but which, fed through Green Day's filter, become theirs.