February 9, 2009

New Green Day Album Set to Push the Boundaries of Pretentiousness

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Rolling Stone has it on good authority that Bay Area pop-punkers Green Day will be releasing their eighth album, 21st Century Breakdown, this May. If you thought that perhaps they’d realized that despite the commercial success of 2004’s American Idiot, it was actually a bit of an overreach, relying on copycat grandiosity, and maybe it’s time to get back to basics, you’d be so, so wrong. The new album appears to ratchet the high-concept gobbledygook up to 11, featuring 16 songs separated into three “acts,” including “Heroes and Cons,” “Charlatans and Saints” and “Horseshoes and Handgrenades.” Huh? They also appear to be turning the tables on alleged plagiarizers Coldplay with the reported song title “Viva La Gloria.” Or Mrs. Estefan and All Her Friends? The band also showcased their exciting new high-concept hairdos at last night’s Grammys (see photo above)—hey guys, ever heard of the Pet Shop Boys?

Legendary producer and Garbage-man Butch Vig will be at the controls, which means at least it’ll sound pretty. You can pre-order the album already over here. However, the inevitable Dean Gray mashup album will probably be special order only.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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