Green Day: ¡Tré! – review

The final part of Green Day's album trilogy explains why they didn't dump two thirds of the songs and make one album of nothing but killer songs: even across three discs, they couldn't come up with one album of nothing but killer songs. That's not to say Tré is a turkey: like its predecessors, it's got some pretty good songs – but they never get better than pretty good. What's more, some of the steals here are so obvious as to be jaw-dropping, even if the sources are unexpected: the opening Brutal Love is all but a note-for-note re-creation of Sam Cooke's Bring It on Home to Me; Missing You takes its bridge from the Who's Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand; Dirty Rotten Bastards from the refrain of Carmen's Toreador Song. Green Day haven't forgotten how to write a tune – 99 Revolutions is a blast, for all its asinine lyrics – but as the trilogy draws to a close, you feel Green Day have built nothing more than a folly.