Green Day – American Idiot (2004/2012) [HDTracks FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

Chart History/Awards
– Reached #1 on the Billboard 200.
– On Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
– On NME “100 Greatest Albums of the Decade.”
– On NARM‘s “Definitive 200 Albums of All Time.”
– GRAMMY® Winner for Best Rock Album.
– “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” won the GRAMMY® for Record of the Year.
– Includes the chart-topping hits “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams,” “American Idiot” and “Holiday”

American Idiot is the 2004 masterpiece from modern rock super group Green Day. It was one of the most anticipated albums of 2004. Inspired by The Who, American Idiot is an epic, unapologetic rock opera that follows the story of Jesus of Suburbia, an anti-hero character created by Billie Joe Armstrong. The politically-charged narrative would top the Billboard 200 and yield the hit singles “American Idiot,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Holiday” “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and “Jesus Of Suburbia.” Selling over fourteen million copies worldwide, the album is listed on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”

It’s a bit tempting to peg Green Day’s sprawling, ambitious, brilliant seventh album, American Idiot, as their version of a Who album, the next logical step forward from the Kinks-inspired popcraft of their underrated 2000 effort, Warning, but things aren’t quite that simple. American Idiot is an unapologetic, unabashed rock opera, a form that Pete Townshend pioneered with Tommy, but Green Day doesn’t use that for a blueprint as much as they use the Who’s mini-opera “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” whose whirlwind succession of 90-second songs isn’t only emulated on two song suites here, but provides the template for the larger 13-song cycle. But the Who are only one of many inspirations on this audacious, immensely entertaining album. The story of St. Jimmy has an arc similar to Hüsker Dü’s landmark punk-opera Zen Arcade, while the music has grandiose flourishes straight out of both Queen and Rocky Horror Picture Show (the ’50s pastiche “Rock and Roll Girlfriend” is punk rock Meat Loaf), all tied together with a nervy urgency and a political passion reminiscent of the Clash, or all the anti-Reagan American hardcore bands of the ’80s. These are just the clearest touchstones for American Idiot, but reducing the album to its influences gives the inaccurate impression that this is no more than a patchwork quilt of familiar sounds, when it’s an idiosyncratic, visionary work in its own right. First of all, part of Green Day’s appeal is how they have personalized the sounds of the past, making time-honored guitar rock traditions seem fresh, even vital. With their first albums, they styled themselves after first-generation punk they were too young to hear firsthand, and as their career progressed, the group not only synthesized these influences into something distinctive, but chief songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong turned into a muscular, versatile songwriter in his own right.

Warning illustrated their growing musical acumen quite impressively, but here, the music isn’t only tougher, it’s fluid and, better still, it fuels the anger, disillusionment, heartbreak, frustration, and scathing wit at the core of American Idiot. And one of the truly startling things about American Idiot is how the increased musicality of the band is matched by Armstrong’s incisive, cutting lyrics, which effectively convey the paranoia and fear of living in American in days after 9/11, but also veer into moving, intimate small-scale character sketches. There’s a lot to absorb here, and cynics might dismiss it after one listen as a bit of a mess when it’s really a rich, multi-faceted work, one that is bracing upon the first spin and grows in stature and becomes more addictive with each repeated play. Like all great concept albums, American Idiot works on several different levels. It can be taken as a collection of great songs — songs that are as visceral or as poignant as Green Day at their best, songs that resonate outside of the larger canvas of the story, as the fiery anti-Dubya title anthem proves — but these songs have a different, more lasting impact when taken as a whole. While its breakneck, freewheeling musicality has many inspirations, there really aren’t many records like American Idiot (bizarrely enough, the Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boat is one of the closest, at least on a sonic level, largely because both groups draw deeply from the kaleidoscopic “A Quick One”). In its musical muscle and sweeping, politically charged narrative, it’s something of a masterpiece, and one of the few — if not the only — records of 2004 to convey what it feels like to live in the strange, bewildering America of the early 2000s.

Tracklist:
01 – American Idiot
02 – Jesus Of Suburbia
03 – Holiday
04 – Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
05 – Are We The Waiting
06 – St. Jimmy
07 – Give Me Novacaine
08 – She’s A Rebel
09 – Extraordinary Girl
10 – Letterbomb
11 – Wake Me Up When September Ends
12 – Homecoming
13 – Whatsername

About the Mastering: American Idiot was a multi-track digital session mixed through an analog desk with analog EQ and analog effects to an analog tape deck. It was delivered to Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound in NYC as an analog 1/2” 2-track master and converted to 192/24 digital.

Download:

mqs.link_GreenDayAmericanIdi0t2004HDTracks24192.part1.rar
mqs.link_GreenDayAmericanIdi0t2004HDTracks24192.part2.rar
mqs.link_GreenDayAmericanIdi0t2004HDTracks24192.part3.rar