Pop-punks-turned-social critics spin their wheels on Idiot followup.

Green Day faced a decade of cultural irrelevancy between 1994’s slacker manifesto Dookie and 2004’s revolution-minded American Idiot. The band’s post-Dookie slippage suggests that Green Day knows what it has to lose this time around, but there is one little problem with maintaining its current agitprop stance: How do you rock against Bush when Bush isn’t around anymore? Like many anti-Bushers, Green Day is still angry, though much of its anger is now aimless, and its target leans toward faceless institutions. “Do you know the enemy?” is a question posed early on 21st Century Breakdown —lacking an answer suggests that the band is looking for leadership, not providing it.

The massive success of Idiot requires an ambitious followup, and Green Day does not disappoint in that respect. Breakdown contains 18 songs, separated into three sections, and runs for over an hour. It also feels very much like its predecessor — there’s plenty of mid-song shifting, and minor amounts of experimentation inserted very carefully into music that sounds an awful lot like Green Day. “Viva La Gloria” and “Restless Heart Syndrome” start with some piano plinking, and both end up with the crunchy chord progressions that the band has built its reputation on. The title track and “Horseshoes and Hand Grenades” are both fun, but lack the immediacy of tracks like “American Idiot” and “Holiday.”

When Dookie struck a nerve with people in the immediate aftermath of the grunge era, Green Day hung around on the fringes for a decade, waiting for another cause. Only five years after American Idiot, it feels like the band is once again spinning its wheels. Ready for a rock-opera about irresponsible financial policies?