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Green Day at Coachella review – fun but muddled set pokes fun at American Idiots
The weekend’s legacy headliner offered some cathartic punk pop rebellion but the awkward setlist lacked coherence and thought
To be fair, the California-based band, formed when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt were in high school in 1987, was dealt a tough hand as Coachella’s headliner follow up to Lady Gaga, who transformed the desert into a gothic fever dream with a stunning and instantly canonical set on Friday night. Without intro, the band plowed through 18 tracks spanning 1994’s Dookie to 2024’s Saviors, all delivered with their signature impishness unaffected by time, with standard concert camera work and stock visuals largely rendered in the stark American Idiot color scheme of white, black and red. Photograph: Amy Harris/Invision/APThat’s not a knock on the band members – drummer Tré Cool, sweating off his glitter eyeshadow with relentless pursuit of rapid-fire rhythm; bassist Dirnt, as dogged and limber as ever; and especially Armstrong, whose voice retains a hint of the punk nasality and remains one of the most distinctive and pleasing in American rock music.
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