This album, I feel, is caught somewhere in the middle between Uno and Dos. On one hand, there are some fun, catchy tracks ("X-Kid", "Walk Away", "Missing You") as well as some more experimental stuff ("Brutal Love") that make the album, as a whole, fairly enjoyable. On the other, the garbage guitar tone is still present and as noticeable (if not more so) than it was on Uno, and theThis album, I feel, is caught somewhere in the middle between Uno and Dos. On one hand, there are some fun, catchy tracks ("X-Kid", "Walk Away", "Missing You") as well as some more experimental stuff ("Brutal Love") that make the album, as a whole, fairly enjoyable. On the other, the garbage guitar tone is still present and as noticeable (if not more so) than it was on Uno, and the self-plagiarizing is worse than it was on Dos.
It should be noted that this album is no Uno; even if some of the songs feel a bit short, out of place, or like filler, they're all fairly musically and lyrically competent, and function as likable little tunes on their own (In fact, it was with some of these shorter and sweeter tracks that I had the most fun, such as "8th Avenue Serenade"). There's nothing particularly new or groundbreaking on this album aside from the first track "Brutal Love", a delightful fusion of doo-wop and glam rock style for which the too-clean guitar actually works, but there's still plenty to enjoy: the addicting "Missing You" and "Walk Away" stand out particularly, as does the lead single "X-Kid", which in following the tradition of the trilogy having one excellent single per album, is great fun and instantly warrants multiple listens. As with Dos the lyrics seem to suit the song better than they did on Uno, which makes for comfortable listening and meaning this album is one you can easily jam to.
Now, on to the negative. As I said, the trilogy has a tradition of one great single per album, while the others are mediocre at best. This is again true for "The Forgotten", a cheap carbon copy of 21st Century Breakdown's "Last Night On Earth"; the slow, sad-sounding tune doesn't really fit in with anything on any of the three albums, and seems completely out of place for the band as a whole. Once again, more exciting and energetic tracks such as "Missing You" or "Walk Away" could have filled this spot, but for some reason one of the worst songs on the album (in my opinion) was chosen as the second single. The largest opportunity for producing singles in the trilogy came with this album, and it was thrown away. The songs don't really fit together as a whole, either; listening to them individually you sound fine, but a trip straight through the album without a break will leave you puzzled through sonic inconsistency. Even though I listed them as a strength, the shorter songs can also be considered a weakness because a few have a tendency to sound random and nonsensical ("Amanda", "Sex, Drugs, and Violence", "Little Boy Named Train"), completely out of step with the rest of the album's sound. Lastly, "Dirty Rotten Bastards", which is supposed to be the "Jesus of Suburbia" (from American Idiot) of the album, completely fails in capturing the diversely grand and epic nature of its predecessor, mainly because there's no story to/behind it to make us understand the potency of the lyrics; indeed, this too feels like a cheap carbon copy (though in style more than sound) of an earlier Green Day tune.
To wrap things up, Tre isn't a bad album, but it could have been a lot better, and thus a lukewarm and not entirely satisfying ending is wrought to Green Day's Uno/Dos/Tre trilogy. After listening to Demolicious, the album consisting entirely of demos of the songs from these three albums released two years after the trilogy's conclusion, I have only this to say: when some of the demos are better than their studio versions, it makes you wonder if they would have been better off just releasing the demos instead. 6/10… Expand