VARIOUS ARTISTS

“American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording”

***

TONIGHT’S Broadway opening of “American Idiot” has Green Day fans wondering if the rock ‘n’ roll had to be gutted for the sake of the stage.

No worries. One listen to showstopper “21 Guns,” and you know what the answer is — the cast, with a little help from Green Day, nails it in a rendition that rivals the original, which is no wonder because the trio plays on this and other tracks.

The music still rocks, especially on the big, fast-paced songs such as the opening title track as well as “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Holiday.” The album features the entire 2004 namesake record plus a few tracks from the band’s 2009 CD “21st Century Breakdown.”

If hard-edge punk rawness is your priority, stick to the originals. While the Broadway version still rocks — guitars wail, drums pound — the stage interpretation does have that Broadway polish. Still, it captures the music and makes the love story woven into the record’s themes of wasted youth, paranoia and media control more apparent.

Rock musicals like to start songs simply, with a single voice, and allow the piece to build and get fat with massive orchestration and chorus. The cast uses that effect beautifully on the pivotal song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

“All Days Are Nights:

Songs for Lulu”

*

ALTHOUGH Rufus Wainwright is from the singer/songwriter tradition, his music has sharply veered from pop. After dabbling with symphony orchestration and operatic vocals on recent projects, his sixth studio album is bare-bones piano and voice. It’s a stark record that examines mortality, inspired by the long illness and recent death of his mother, folksinger Kate McGarrigle. Only the song “Give Me What I Want and Give It to Me Now” comes close to pop. The rest are piano ballads that delve into mourning, despair and anguish.

Wainwright adds even more weight to the music with his opera-obsessed vocals. This is contemporary-classical music and it’s an acquired taste; if you aren’t already a fan, each spin of this disc may be a chore.

AC/DC

“Iron Man 2”

****

THE closest AC/DC came to making a “greatest hits” album was in ’86 with the “Who Made Who” album that served as the soundtrack to the film “Maximum Overdrive.” This seminal Aussie metal band is back at the movies — this time for “Iron Man 2” — with what amounts to a very comprehensive hits collection that features 15 classics from their 10 studio albums. “T.N.T.” is here, as is “Highway to Hell,” “Back in Black” and “War Machine.” The only big numbers missing are “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)”. This is a no-risk disc.