Blink 182 Album Review…Get Your Popcorn Ready

When I was 12 years old, Blink-182 taught me how to say fuck.

They wore goofy clothes, had purple hair, sang songs about stupid girls (eww), and, whether you want to admit it or not, changed music.. forever.

I know that many of you DubAtomic followers may not be into Blink, and I understand; Dancing to a guitar rift and a bass line is not the same thing as dubstep, or 99% of the music on this site for that matter, but here me out on this: There would be no dubstep, no millions of remixes to electro-pop dance songs, no Pretty Lights, Sex Ray Vision, Big Gigantic, Matt & Kim, Passion Pit or any such modern act, if it wasn’t for Blink-182. Don’t believe me? Those artists I just mentioned might not either, but it’s the truth.

Think back to the year 2000 (hard, huh?), or better yet, 1999, when Blink-182 released Enema of the State. What was music like back then? There were fine lines between Rock, Pop, Country and Rap, which were pretty much the only four types of main stream music. Non-Rock N Roll music consisted of Gansta Rap and maybe a little R&B. Other than that, if you wanted to dance, you’d better have an N*Sync CD ready to go (don’t forget, this was long before iPods).

Blink-182 changed popular music with that record. They went from being a punk band to being a “pop-punk” band, meaning people began signing along to songs they normally would not have, not to mention the band ditched their heavy metal-influenced drummer and added Travis Barker, who was doing records with P. Diddy a few years later, and since has been all over Lil Wayne’s music.

Nowadays, the most successful songs are dancey, hip-hoppy, electro-poppy…. whatever you want to call them, but they all have catchy “hooks,” or poppy choruses people can sing to. Blink-182 added a hip-hop influenced drummer to a punk band, and began using ridiculously catchy sing-a-long melodies in their songs 13 years ago, and subsequently added a piece to the puzzle that is now the format for the music we all love. Boom.

Now that a whole decade+ has passed, the pop-punk trio from So-Cal has given us more brain-sticking melodies, 3-chord progressions, bass and drum only second verses, dueling vocal harmonies, radio-friendly angst-y anthems, and quotable lyrics than we have room in our iTunes libraries for. From the earliest stuff to Dude Ranch, through Enema of the State, Take off Your Pants and Jacket, and the self-titled album that seemed to be their last, they always managed to progress, yet maintain who they were.

That slowly evolving identity has never been more present than it is in on their newest album Neighborhoods, which came out early this week.

Since their last album, they’ve been parents, had other bands, Mark hosted a TV show, Tom produced a movie, and Travis almost died in a plane crash. Their more mature view of life can be heard in the tracks of Neighborhoods, but so can their uniquely simple, yet intricately innovative style that spawned not only a new sub-style of music, but a sub-culture of adolescence.

The album starts with a track, Ghost on the Dance Floor, that sounds heavily influenced by Tom Delounge’s Angles and Airwaves (AVA). The 12th track, Love is Dangerous, also sounds like an AVA song, so much so that our beloved CEO, Nicky Rones, believe it was a possible cut from AVA’s upcoming album “LOVE II” slated to drop 11/11/11.

While these tracks may sound more like Angles than Blink, they are not bad by any stretch. Ghost on the Dance Floor is melodic and fast paced, a great way to start the album. It’s a great toe-tappin, head-bobbin pop-punk jam. When Tom sings, in his ever-so-recognizable voice: It’s like the universe has left me / without a place to go, and you can hear Mark singing in the background too, it gives the album it’s first moment that says: THIS is BLINK!

Throughout the album, the same theme is beaten into my brain over and over and over: These are Blink songs that have evolved with time. There are some classic blink moments, a few strange sounds, and some points where the stretches of Blink’s range (which isn’t very broad) are tested, from emo-rock, to pop-rock, emo-pop (?) to straight punk.

Natives, Snake Charmer, Hearts All Gone and Mh 4.18.2011, all have serious punk punk punk-rock moments to me, just like the guitar chord progression in the pre-verse to Up All Night, the album’s first single. Just one more thing I love about Blink: the ability to go from “rip your face off” punk band in the pre-verse, to “let’s rock this arena” modern era rock band in the verse, to “let’s love and cuddle” emo band in the chorus.

After Midnight, which according to rollingstone.com will be the second single off the album, show’s another side of Blink-182, that only first appeared on their last album. The song is completely based off a drum beat fit for a rapper. It’s funny how beats that have been spat over by the likes of Weezy Drake and Busta, never feel more at home than they do behind the punky progressions and distinctive vocal melodies and lyrics of Tom Delounge and Mark Hoppus.

However, in my mind and ears, tracks 7-10 capture Blink the best on this album. Hearts All Gone, Kaleidoscope, Wishing Well, and This Is Home (and possibly even track 11, Mh 4.18.11) are just vintage Blink. If Neighborhoods is your first Blink experience, listen closely to the chorus of Kaleidoscope and the second verse of Wishing well (when Tom sings solo over the bass + drums). That is what Blink will always sound like to me, and I’m glad that sound is still present on Neighborhoods.

In the end, Neighborhoods isn’t perfect. It’s not Enema of the State, Dookie, the Color and the Shape, 40 Oz. to Freedom or the Blue Album. It’s certainly not Sgt. Pepper’s or Who’s Next, heck, it’s not even Jagged Little Pill (anyone else love Alanis?). But for a band that has been through Rock and Roll hell and back over the last eight years, it shows resilience, and and ever-expanding collection of songs that are uniquely, well…. Blink.

Blink-182 will always go down as the pop-punk clowns who terrorized the airwaves of the “boy band clashes with gangster rap” era of the turn of the century. But those who actually listen will recognized that they played a major role in shaping the next decade of tunes, and perhaps much more.