Age old adage that less is thoroughly more in mind, man did this “epic as fuck” trilogy lose steam fast. And it has nothing to do with Billie Joe Armstrong losing his shit at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, the sobriety-ending, Justin Bieber-scapegoating charade that forced the iconic punk-poppers to bunch ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! release dates closer together and cancel their tour. In short, Green Day put the cart before the horse, and wrote a bunch of half-baked crunch together, slapped a cheeky title on ’em and called it a day. ¡Uno! at least had a guiding energy. ¡Dos! had a mere five salvageable tracks. And ¡Tré!? Well, ¡Tré! had one, honest thrash. So here’s an homage to that sole track and four others we tried our best to wrap our heads around:

‘X-Kid‘

It’s still miles away from the staccato-teen Dookie in which they hath wrought a near 20 years ago, but this is the finest homage to that ethos they’ve written, in which the Gen-Xers finally and sincerely look themselves in the mirror and come to terms with their shortcomings, see their younger, naive selves and proceed to jam. Or rather, “bombs away, here goes nothing:” [LISTEN]

Hey, little kid

Did you wake up late one day

And you’re not so young

But you’re still dumb

And you’re numb to your own glory

‘8th Avenue Serenade‘

It has a great hook, and some crooning back-up vocal lulls, but as the noir they attempted to shock with on ¡Dos! goes, the themes painted here are befuddling, romanticizing either a chance encounter at a “bathroom stall” or a fleeting “serenade” with Billie Joe’s psyche, foreshadowed with a little unintended irony “before all the flames burn out:” [LISTEN]

My imagination runs away

On this 8th avenue serenade

Meet me at the bathroom stall

Meet me at the whispering wall

Before all the flames burn out

‘Brutal Love‘

If all of ¡Tré! chased this post-war doo-wop vibe, we’d have a different opinion of this disjointed self-loather, riddled with “mad sex,” “bitters and soda” and lots of “shame.” Really, Armstrong should pool all this hatred for his twisted ways and create something beautiful from it. Instead, he’s trying to weave it into the Green Day lineage with a cheap brass section and “modern fool” analogy: [LISTEN]

Bad luck

Bitters and soda

Anguish and shame

The modern fool

Bad sex

Buy me a train wreck

Something for my troubled mind

‘Drama Queen‘

Though another example of the odd bag of tricks Green Day are trying to bunch together here in the name of art, the only acoustic number on the record is actually kind of punk-vaudeville clever in its skewering of privileged American daughters, even if a little crude with “old enough to bleed now” age signifiers. Would’ve made sense on the nightmarish depravity on ¡Dos!, though: [LISTEN]

Everyone’s drama queen

I think she’s going psycho

Daddy’s little bundle of joy

Out of a magazine

Everyone’s drama queen

Is old enough to bleed now

‘Dirty Rotten Bastards‘

An epic fail of an attempt at a trilogy within a trilogy of a melody, this baboonery call-to-arms chases some bootstrap punk vibe, but comes off all cartoony, Armstrong drawing lines in his “best friends ashes” going on about how “we’re all lost souls and living in cages,” as the senseless slap-bass and flashy solos unfurl. However, its opening verse is eerily soothsayerish, and therefore, entertaining: [LISTEN]

Calling all demons

This is the season

Next stop is therapy

We’re the retarded and broken hearted

The season of misery