Greenday | Dookie
Dookie is an energy packed, high speed album with punk attitude in spades. It seems that Greenday's inimitable style is just irrisistable to almost everyone, hence their overwhelming popularity. However, if you look under the bonnet of this insane collection of punk anthems, you'll quickly realise that Greenday's musical ability isn't all that great.

The basic premise of punk is all about rebellion, spreading a message and generally acting as outrageously as possible. While the tried and tested formula of power chords fails to inspire, it is Billy Joe Armstrong's uniquely punk-esque voice and the fantastic basslines that make them stand out from the other punk-wannabes. Although this is an album I would heartily recommend to anyone (not least because of the fact that it's hard not to like), there isn't nearly enough variety in the songs for it to be as good as it could be. The fact is, Greenday seem to be the kind of band that have a truly excellent album's worth of songs that is unfortunately spread out over several albums. As it is, 'Dookie' is a great album, but I would hesitate to call it 'truly excellent'.

The best tracks on 'Dookie' are undoubtedly 'Longview' and 'Basket Case', although there are quite a few other tracks worth mentioning - tracks such as 'Burnout', 'Welcome to Paradise' and 'Pulling Teeth' really get the adrenaline working overtime when listened to at full volume when you're in the house by yourself. Which brings me nicely onto the bonus track, which is about just that - being by yourself. It sounds like Tré (the drummer) is singing on it and it's quite funny.

I could go through 'Dookie' track by track, but it's more a case of putting in the CD and listening to the thing all the way through from start to finnish. The album's main strongpoint is its unfailing consistancy which makes it an album worth buying.

Sound Clips
'Longview' - (0:29) | 'Basket Case' - (0:27)

RATING: 88%