As someone who spends most of his waking hours with a toddler, the times when I’m walking or driving alone are far and few between. When the opportunities do arise, there’s only one thing to do: play kick-ass music just a little bit louder than is probably prudent. And despite the fact that I have plenty of “good new music”:http://www.beck.com/guero.php waiting for just such moments, when it comes time to queue something up on the iPod, I find myself turning again and again to _American Idiot_. I’ve never been a particular Greenday fan and couldn’t tell you thing one about the band, but man, that album rocks. As I “noted in passing”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/2005/04/adfoo.html a few weeks ago, the lyrics hold no significance whatsoever, but now I wish I had never read them,, because when all you hear is the odd words and fragments that you pick up when you’re mostly just headbanging, it sure _seems_ significant. I mean, can you think of a better expression for post-9/11 angst than the line “Wake me up when September ends?” And yet the song with that title is about something else entirely.

But there’s not a dud song in the bunch, and they’re all meant for playing loud, and the second and penultimate tracks are these glorious nine-minute song sequences with transcendant transitions. Heck, just now I got off the Metro one stop early just so I could be sure to hear it to the end while walking home. Gotta love it.