Stop Drop and Roll!!!

With four years passed since Green Day’s American Idiot, fans were ready and waiting for the band’s next album; instead, they got another side project, this one dubbed Foxboro Hot Tubs. The trio is joined here by touring pals Jason White and Jason Freese (guitar and keyboards), with Kevin Preston on rhythm guitar. They’ve colored their simple, punky sound with various shades of cool ‘60s mod, pop, and garage stylings, with great reward. The title track, “Stop, Drop and Roll” is an awesome display of Hives-style garage power-rock with clanging guitars and explosive drumming, while “Red Tide” is a colorful throwback to the psych-pop bands of the ‘60s, done in the style of ‘80s revival groups like the Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate. The wonderfully raucous “Highway 1” sounds like something from the first Hi-Fives album (a great Bay Area garage band), a full on, adrenaline pumping rave-up. Curiously, the first and second singles, “Mother Mary” and “Pedestrian” feature Billie Joe Armstrong on vocals, and sound distressingly like Green Day songs. That complaint aside, there is plenty to have fun with here, and the band’s playfulness says a lot about their admirable passion for music.