Here at Runout, we have just celebrated our anniversary, so firstly we would like to thank all our subscribers for their continued support, and secondly, we have decided that this March we would celebrate albums which are also celebrating anniversaries this year.
With that in mind, we are proud to offer this month as our curated LP Green Day’s Nimrod which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2022. This album has been sidelined by many as a vehicle for one track ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’ a punk rock acoustic masterclass which became an anthem that straddled the millennial and gen Z generations, but overshadowed what should be seen as the best Green Day album in a star-studded collection.
Nimrod saw Green Day riding high off the success of Dookie, and the dark and introspective punk stylings of Insomniac, and should be seen as a high water mark for the band which would be rediscovered in 2004 when they gave the American political system and the President of the United States a black eye with American Idiot.
The album doesn’t fit into the standard album troupe of a concise set of songs which follow a common theme in attitude and appearance, but Nimrod is a masterpiece which shows “Green Day (as) comfortable and confident with what they’ve become – the biggest punk band in the world, one of the best live bands on it – and fully embracing their new station and becoming the kings of it”.
Clocking in at 18 tracks and almost 50 minutes in length, and sweeping through a range of styles Nimrod showcases a band in transition both professionally, and personally, using the album as a springboard to show the classic punk defiance through a flourish of new musical styles, anchored perfectly by Billie Joe Armstrong’s amazingly emotional, vitriolic, and personal songwriting.
Behind the guitar, bass, and drums triptych which had served the band so well on their breakout albums, their sound was bolstered on Nimrod by the introduction of strings, horns, and all the power of studio techniques allowing the band to test their boundaries.
Nimrod is more than just an album of experimentation from a band looking to grow to suit their new surroundings, it is also moving, and “brimming with complex ideas that are heartfelt, beautiful, and far from young and optimistic”.
The album is full of differing styles with surf-rock, ska, hardcore, and punk all wrapped up in the cocoon of Billie Joe’s smart, darkly themed “multidimensional analyses of love, commitment, and the concerns that accompany settling down”. Tracks like ‘Scattered’, ‘Reject’, ‘Haushinka’, and ‘The Grouch’ are brimming with hormone-pumping, muscle-clenching, ear-humping, punk perfection.
‘Hitchin’ A Ride’ sees Billie Joe reflecting on his issues with sobriety which was confirmed by himself in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone magazine “During Nimrod, my drinking took off,”
Further reflections on issues such as love can be found on ‘Redundant’ which sounds like a realisation of the great love a child (Billie Joe had become a father around the time of Nimrod’s recording) can provide, while contemplating the fear of the enormous love children create.
‘Walking Alone’ looks at the loss of old friends, while ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’ which was penned in 1990, but not used on either Dookie or Insomniac, is a treatise on how to deal with a broken heart, but also become a mirror which allowed that and future generations to reflect their own interpretations onto it.
Nimrod is an album which should be praised as more than just a stop-gap in Green Day’s body of work, but as a masterpiece where they embraced their calling as voices of not only this generation but also any generation which struggles with the thought of growing up.
Enjoy.
RRC - Stu
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