For a band so often credited with revitalising punk in the 90s, Green Day haven’t half embraced their prog side in their dotage. First came the concept albums, then came the experiments in musical theatre and now we have the last part of a trilogy (with, um, a fourth part coming in the shape of a DVD, ¡Quatro!).
Clearly, they laugh in the face of risking a Use Your Illusion-style studio bloat (although swollen piano-and string-led ballad The Forgotten, closing the album, teeters on the edge). But at the heart of all the lofty ambition, what we have here are 12 expertly crafted slabs of power-pop, sometimes channelling Elvis Costello (Amanda), sometimes throwing out the jazz-hands, musical-theatre feel of Green Day’s latter career (the sparky Dirty Rotten Bastards).
In truth, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! could probably have been boiled down to one great album, with some of the filler here cut out. Instead, ¡Tré! stands alone as a momentarily diverting, if inessential, pop-rock album that neither reaches the snotty heights of Dookie nor the dreary lows of Warning.
