21st century breakdown

has a dozen near-nadirs up until the almost-good "21 Guns" before ending with "See the Light." skip right to it and sing "You Shook Me All Night Long" over it. The worst thing about 2009 Green Day isn't that they're delusional bigheads with too much money, received politics and string sections on call, because all of that would be tolerable if their hookcraft didn't sink from extraordinary to the laziest, dumbest knockoffs of like what, latter-day Offspring? The songwriting is a far drop from American Idiot (which I'm already not crazy about) but I probably prefer the production here. Crunches harder, harmonies brighter, ambitions are stupider-stupendouser, any good songs and it would've worked. Too bad the inevitable back-to-basics move to follow will be unplugged or something.