Album Reviews

Green Day

`21st Century Breakdown'

(Warner Korea)

After the massive success of ``American Idiot,'' it has taken Grammy winning rockers Green Day four years to release a new album. ``21st Century Breakdown'' is worth the wait. An ambitious rock opera, the album is divided into three acts and filled with power riffs, ballads and lots of angst.

``My generation is zero, I never made it as a working class hero,'' Billie Joe Armstrong sings in the title track. Green Day pushes their post-punk rock sound to the next level, with songs like ``East Jesus Nowhere,'' ``Murder City,'' ``American Eulogy,'' and even ballads like ``Last Night on Earth.'' A strong album like this only solidifies Green Day's position as one of the top rock bands of today.

-Cathy Rose A. Garcia

Various Artists

`Cyborg She'

(SonyBMG)

If you watched the Japanese comedy film ``Cyborg She,'' directed by Kwak Jae-young and starring actress Haruka Ayase, then you'll probably like the soundtrack. Japanese pop diva Misia sings the moving ballad ``Yakusoku No Tsubasa,'' which was the film's theme song. New four-member group Hi-fi Camp sings a fun, upbeat track ``Kizuna,'' which is their debut single. Most of the songs are instrumental pieces that added charm to the film about a young man falling for a cute cyborg girl.

Nikolai Tokarev

`French Album'

(Sony Classical)

Rising Russian pianist Nikolai Tokarev brings works by Rameau, Debussy, Ravel and Franckn in what is most appropriately called ``French Album.'' The 25-year-old's second recording for the Sony label is his first to be released in Korea.

If his debut album showcased a wide-ranging style, from Chopin to Mussorgsky, this one seems to be a statement piece of a different kind, though in a most positive sense, with the definitive title and the rather ``ambitious'' repertoire of piano solo works representing the French masters, from Baroque to modern times.

A recipient of the German Echo Classical 2008 award, Tokarev demonstrates both poetic grace and immaculate technique in Debussy's ``Clair de Lune'' and Franck's ``Prelude, variation et fugue,'' Op. 18.

-Lee Hyo-won