MUSIC WIRE - insomniac review "do as I say, not as I do," sings billie joe, lead singer and primary songwriter for green day, on the title-says-it-all "walking contradiction" that closes insomniac, green day's followup to the monster smash dookie. "my wallet's fat and so is my head...i'm a smart-ass but I'm playing dumb," he goes on in a melody catchy enough for the go go's. the guy attends harvard, for sid's sake. he's singing to his audience, educated and bored suburban kids for whom punk is merely a stage, even kinda cute. the green day of dookie were never really punk, but rather a bunch of pop kids who had heard some sex pistols, picked up a phony brit accent and sang that way over edgy pop songs. "when i come around" a punk song? not. insomniac backs carefully into a more pure punk sonic space, with two-minute guitar riffs and shouted chori as the modus operandi. the band nicely anticipated critics who would slag them for making another punk-lite album, and in the meantime cribbed some truly old school tricks like calling two-minute riff-orgasm songs. green day has dared to conform to punk rock orthodoxy. rather quaint, but it sure sounds great. smartly, billie joe doesn't pretend to buy into the punk notion of no future, and he's no phony posing as a street kid. the cultural vocabulary comes from saturday night live ("bab's uvula who"), classic rock from aerosmith to chicago, and parties of the slumming california elite that make up much of the punk audience that will buy the album. "brat" perfectly conveys a rich-punk wastrel in 1:41, "stuck with me" glances off the punk-pop "turning japanese" and the oretenders, and the ramones loom large. but no punk rock orthodoxy would permit cribbing the riff from chicago's "25 or 6 to 4," a song about writer's block in the wee hours, for a song about insomnia ("brain stew"). the difference is that billie joe isn't staring blankly at a keyboard in an empty studio like the guy in chicago, but probably strung out on speed in his parents' big house. since green day dragged punk into the mainstream, they can put the mainstream back into their punk with ease. ed hewitt