Stop Drop And Roll!!!

Being a rock star is a job like every other — there comes a time when you just can't face doing the same old shit every day. So you launch a side project.

As The Passengers, U2 record soundtracks to films that don't exist; Weezer perform Nirvana covers as Goat Punishment; Foo Fighter Dave Grohl lives out his heavy-metal dreams in Probot; clearly bored of Blur, Damon Albarn has done retro-rock (The Good, The Bad, And The Queen) and hip-hop (Gorillaz); and the frontman of emo navelgazers Death Cab For Cutie dabbles in extra-curricular electronica.

Green Day may have missed the part about side projects offering the chance to try something different — their alter-ego Foxboro Hot Tubs sound not unlike Green Day — but they've jumped at the chance to ditch the respectability that came with 'American Idiot'. Far from being earnest socio-political commentary, 'Stop, Drop and Roll!!!' is the sound of three guys having fun raiding their vintage garage rock collections. They've got the raw power of The Stooges, and the melodies of The Kinks and The Who.

The jagged 'Alligator' is more than a nod to 'You Really Got Me'; the cheeky 'She's A Saint Not A Celebrity' wouldn’t be out of place on 1965's 'My Generation'; and calm amid the storm 'Dark Side Of Night' harks back to the white soul (and flutes) of The Zombies' classic 'Time Of The Season'.

Unsurprisingly then comparisons with other retro The groups of the past five years are inevitable. The tornado title track sounds more like The Hives than the Swedes themselves, the cheery 'Mother Mary' has a whiff of The Strokes about it, and jaunty 'Ruby Room' might have been written by Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs.

This side project isn't exactly big on originality — if they're not copying others, they're imitating themselves (on the back-to-basics 'The Pedestrian'). But, despite clocking in at just over 32 minutes, it's as big on fun as you'd expect from an album with three exclamation marks in the title. Simple songs played with reckless abandon, 'Stop Drop And Roll!!!' is intended to be cranked up — an escape from the daily grind.