blink-182 “Neighborhoods” Review

Blech, yeah, yeah, yeah, Green Day, shut up.

I listened to this album today and since it’s the first couple days since it’s been released I figure I better toss my two cents in before this is outdated.

blink-182 is:

Tom DeLonge on guitars and vocals

Mark Hoppus on bass and vocals

Travis Barker on drums and additional percussion

Released September 27th, 2011 on DGC & Interscope Records

Argh, can this record be infuriating.

Let’s start with the most obvious: I personally don’t think this is blink at their most heartfelt and honest. In fact, I don’t think they’ve been completely sincere with their music since Cheshire Cat and Dude Ranch.

I’m going to address what a lot of people have been saying about this record: “It’s just Angels & Airwaves with Mark!”

Well… yes and no.

First, a little background: blink-182 started out as Blink in 1992 with Tom DeLonge on guitar and vocals, Mark Hoppus on bass and vocals, and Scott Raynor on drums. They played skate-able hardcore in the vein of NOFX and Screeching Weasel with indie-pop influences courtesy of bands like Dinousaur Jr. After three demo tapes and debut album/certified skate-punk classic Cheshire Cat, blink got their first hit with “Dammit (Growing Up)” off one of my favorite pop-punk albums and my favorite blink album, Dude Ranch. This led to their breakout mainstream/TRL hit Enema of the State, an effort catchy and thrashy enough, but too saccharine, leading to the group being hilariously described as “hardcore pop” thanks to crappy single “All the Small Things”; this was followed by their (very slightly) more mature record Take Off Your Pants & Jacket, with arena pop songs like “Stay Together for the Kids” mixed with more punk songs like “Reckless Abandon.” There was more experimentation and darker lyrical themes present here, although it’s overall weak.

Between albums, Tom and Travis formed the post-popcore group Box Car Racer to play with ideas not “blink-friendly;” the songs aren’t terrible but after a while they become tedious. Blink needs the fantastic chemistry between Mark and Tom.

This led to their final record, the extremely dark (Untitled), (unfortunately another pretty weak effort because of the band’s loss of chemistry and Tom becoming a control freak douchebag, dominating the record– all of the bad songs are Tom’s), which foreshadowed both Angels and Airwaves as well as +44. Internal struggles led to blink breaking up and the members went on to separate side projects:

Tom started Angels and Airwaves, who decided to become the “greatest band in the world;” unfortunately their lopsided mix of space rock, “epic-ness,” and Tom’s painkiller-induced haze of stadium pop-rock/laser-light shows dragged the project into the abyss. Tom focused most of his energy on Macbeth Footwear, sold his share of Atticus Clothing, and started his new social networking site, Modlife.

Mark, the more laid-back member, started the gloomy alt rock band +44, which took influence from the Cure, techno, weird indie music, and angsty, energetic post-hardcore. To my shock, it was really, really good, better than Box Car Racer at least.

Mark continues to appear in random side projects, started the website loserkids.com, and now hosts his own show on FUSE, Hoppus on Music.

Travis, previously the least obnoxious blink member, got a few reality shows and was really annoying, then barely survived a plane crash (after which friend DJ AM died), and then released a mediocre solo record entitled Give the Drummer Some.

Afterwards, blink got back together, and they’ve been touring around with the weak support act My Chemical Romance.

So we have Neighborhoods. The biggest mistake I can see with this record is that it’s an unfocused, muddled mess. The biggest compliment I can give it is that unlike other bands like Green Day, who have tried to reclaim the glory of their past, or Metallica, who are trying to erase their past from anyone’s memory, blink seem less focused on their past than not really caring about it at all. I really think Tom could give a damn whether or not people will like this record.

I got the deluxe edition, just so you know:

The album begins with the gauzy, effects-laden Tom song “Ghost on the Dance Floor,” which shows off a contemporary Goth influence. This song wouldn’t be so bad if it were at all memorable, but as soon as it’s gone, it’s gone. You will no longer care about it and instead hope the next song will be good or bad, just anything to end the mind-numbing boredom.

“Natives” is a ‘meh’ song. It’s catchy enough to avoid the sterility of “Ghost on the Dance Floor,” but not intense enough to display actual emotion or talent. The lyrics are good enough. It seems blink’s direction with this album is going for more socio-political, confused, isolated lyrics– much darker than their past material.

Ah, here we go with the big single, “Up All Night!” What a friggin’ stinker. There’s the arena-pop, hip-hop influenced body of the song, which taken for what it is wouldn’t be stunningly bad, but interspersed here and there are these “hard” guitar licks with pounding stadium drums that drown out the bass. The entire composition of the song is disappointing and just lets it all fall flat instead of at least trying to prop it up with some structure, something catchy, a line that’ll stick in your head, good or bad– nada. Blink, please don’t become forgettable. I like you! I care about you! Don’t go the way of the buffalo with songs like these!

“After Midnight” could be forgettable with it’s slacking, mid-tempo pop structures, but the heartfelt lyrics and the sheer intensity of emotion displayed here makes this the first real song worth keeping on this record. It drags a bit and get a bit too saccharine and fluffy, but at least it’s not “All the Small Things.”

Oooh, “Snake Charmer!” What a fantastic title for a song we’re sure will be experimental. And it does start off that way with a little keyboard-influenced guitar, but then BAM! Pounding bass-heavy riff, IN YOUR FACE! Then there’s a little jangly verse, but the riff comes back for the chorus with fast, poppy techno “guitar” over it; it’s alright, I guess. The first time I heard this I thought the lyrics were extremely sexist, but then I figured out that Tom was commenting on the Bible which was sexist itself, so there you go. Lyrics automatically well-thought-out instead of flat-out prejudiced. This song is a B-, man, did I like this after the previous bombs.

I hear this weird little jam, like “The Fallen Interlude” from (Untitled) but a little more rock-and-electronic-influenced. Apparently it’s the “Heart’s All Gone Interlude.” It was establishing the basic rhythm and, though interesting, it was really soft and plush and huggable. I knew this would be the first all-Mark song on the record and I thought, “No, Mark! Don’t go soft on me!”

“Heart’s All Gone” punched me in the face. Fantastic song. Nothing remotely bad about it. In fact, nothing remotely less than spectacular. Super-fast and it recalled the punk days of the band ever so slightly. How-ev-er… it’s much less dense and a thousand times quieter than the rest of the Tom-centric record. Coincidence? I don’t think so. But, it’s a good song. It’s so catchy you’ll have the lyrics burned into your cerebral cortex for at least a month. If I had been in charge of this record this would have been the lead single, I bet people would have bought this record even more then.

“Wishing Well” is a mediocre song on its own. Not especially bad, but it’s like more rock-centric version of “Ghost on the Dance Floor”– just really forgettable. And it would have stayed that way if it weren’t for the lyrics, the lyrics, oh my God you guys, the lyrics. The sheer what-the-hell-does-that-even-mean? obfuscating stupidity just makes this song hilarious. “I reached for a shooting star, it burned a hole through my hand/worked its way through my heart, had fun in the Promised Land.” ¿Qué?

“Kaleidoscope” hurts me, it’s so catchy. Good everything; good lyrics, good bass, good guitar, good effects, good vocals, good drums. Like, ow. I hum this by myself almost as much as I hum “Heart’s All Gone.” The pop song structure might not have worked for another band or even another song on this record but it works painfully well here, except for maybe the debasing fade-out which rips out the support system for the whole song.

“This Is Home,” catchy, poppy, alright lyrics… this song is by no means, at all, bad. But compared to winners like “Kaleidoscope,” “Snake Charmer,” or “Heart’s All Gone…” this song unfortunately just gets left in the dust. And despite the annoying effects on Tom’s vocals this is one of his most endearing performances. Mark’s bass is excellent as well. I hope this song gets recognized, it’s just not as good as it could, would, and should be.

“MH 4.18.2011″ Does anyone else just absolutely love that title? It sounds like a gnarly virus or something. This song is an amazing piece of power-pop despite the bad back-up effects. Mark’s vocals, bass, and lyrics are so compelling that this song trumps up “Kaleidoscope” and is on par with “Heart’s All Gone.” I love it. Why is Mark getting all the best songs?

What is “Love is Dangerous?” It’s practically impossible to confine a song like this to an actual genre… it’s just really mysterious. It’s weak, lukewarm, and lopes off on its own too much, I think. It meanders for so long you can’t remember when it started and it’s slow fade-out makes you think, “Man, I wish this record were better… this song had potential… all the songs could have been good… what a waste…”

But since this is a deluxe edition they haphazardly threw in two extra songs.

The penultimate song is the gross “Fighting the Gravity,” the only bad Mark song on here. I know I’ll get so much flak for this, but it sounds like +44 trying to do Angels & Airwaves. It could have worked. But it doesn’t, and it just floats off into the abyss, like a group of buffalo that the Indians chased off a mountain. And like those poor buffalo, this song goes nowhere but towards doom.

The last song is the rather inappropriate-as-a-closer song “Even If She Falls,” which is more like the three-minute standard radio pop-rock song that I had expected from this record. Despite being a pretty bad choice for a closer (at least “Love is Dangerous” was a logical closure point– this record is starting to feel like Return of the King) it’s very generic and boring when compared to, well, the entirety of the record proper. But I guess on its own it wouldn’t be a bad choice for a single. Then again, “All the Small Things” wasn’t a bad choice for a single, and look where that went.

I’m so legitimately disappointed in this record… gah. This is why I said it’s infuriating.

It’s infuriating because there’s so much wasted talent and potential here, so many stupid decisions, so many missed opportunities. Not only that, but it feels destructive and floundering. It feels like I’m watching Helen Keller set loose in a shopping mall with a bazooka, or Stephen Hawking in the Olympic pool.

This record could have gone places. it could have been good. It could have followed up on the point Box Car Racer left off and been a creative, intense, force.

Unfortunately, Travis’ hip-hop and ska-inspired hard-hitting drumming is not highlighted and he is relegated to being a third wheel. Mark gets the shaft as well despite having the best songs, because Tom is a force to be reckoned with in the studio, especially when he recorded this album by himself and forced Mark and Tom to record their parts alone.

The record is lavished with unneeded effects that weigh the songs down– you can only take so many steroids before you get short and bald.

This record needs some sort of adrenalin to push it through the slow, weak, over-long songs. It’s like Radiohead and the Cure had a baby, and it got left in a dumpster, and this is what happened. It has no one to guide it and push away all the unneeded extras or give it more oomph.

In conclusion, this record is weak. One of blink’s weakest, unfortunately, even more so than Take Off Your Pants or (Untitled). It just feels boring and uninspired, like a big muddled mess. They were trying to be experimental with this record while clinging to the tried-and-true pop format, and I get it, I really do. But if you’re going to explore, you need to tidy the record up or else it just looks like an all-over-the-place, broken, over-wrought, un-thought-out mess, sort of like this review.

Or an album like 21st Century Breakdown…

Uh-oh, did that feel like a teaser to anyone else? Just me getting chills down my spine?

I’m Milo “Mix-Tape” Caulfield and I’ll see ya in a few more months, most likely.

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