It's not easy for any artist to write a song that is simultaneously anthemic and inconsequential, but Green Day have done just that. [...]

"Oh Love" is the first volley in what looks to be a sustained attack by Green Day. [...]Such an undertaking seems ambitious -- not to mention more than a little self-regarding, as though the material is just too good to edit down to a more digestible tracklist. [...]

What rankles most, however, isn't the music they'd made late in their career, but the complete lack of imagination they've shown as they've aged. No band has a script for how it will mature and develop; the possibilities are endless. Green Day, in other words, could have become anything. They certainly had the power and the money and the fans to sustain a career full of unexpected twists and turns and experiments and excursions. Instead, they've very faithfully followed the pre-set path that favors albums as major statements, maturation as introspection, import as a complete rejection of fun. Armstrong might have been a punk original; instead he's fashioned himself after Bono. We already have one of those, and some would even say that's too many.