Artist: Blink-182

Album: Neighborhoods

Label: Interscope

Top Track: Natives

Sounds Like: Angels and Airwaves

Soundwaves: 2.5/5

Now that Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker have entered their mid-30s and settled down with their wives and children, the Blink-182 our generation grew up with is officially dead.

Gone are the days of fart and sex jokes. While the rockers’ 2003 self-titled album gave fans a taste of their maturity, ‘Neighborhoods‘ completes their evolution into adult rockers. The album, the band’s first release in more than eight years, is just mediocre. It’s stripped of the band’s signature adolescent punk sounds and humorous anthems.

The uneven album starts off strong. The first four tracks will satisfy both old-school Blink fans and fans of the members’ side projects Box Car Racer, +44, and Angels and Airwaves. The band draws from personal experiences, weaving the theme of overcoming tragedy throughout the album. The lyrics now contain apologies to loved ones as the trio struggles against its inner demons.

A choppy riff, synthesizer and DeLonge’s distinct vocals set the tone for the album in opener ‘Ghost on the Dance Floor.’ According the band, it’s about hearing a song you shared with someone who has passed away. It’s dedicated to the band’s close friend DJ AM, who died of apparent drug overdose after surviving a September 2008 plane crash from which Barker recovered from critical injuries. DeLonge laments about how the universe has left him without a place to go.

Punk-oriented ‘Natives’ most resembles anything pre-2003 on the album, featuring a quick hammer-on riff as DeLonge and Hoppus share the singing duties between verses and chorus. Despite the happy punk-filled riff, the band speaks about being locked in a cage and dying inside. This fight for sanity drags on in first single ‘Up All Night.’ Despite the aggressive guitar riff, DeLonge and Hoppus once again tap into their inner gloominess, explaining that everyone dies alone.

One reason ‘Neighborhoods’ is uneven may be due to DeLonge’s lead on its production. The band pushes the experimentalism of 2003’s self-titled effort even further. Each band member recorded the album at separate times in separate rooms, heightening the isolation and misery channeled through each song. The album also features strange synthesizer and electronic noises, a carry-over of DeLonge’s Angels and Airwaves days.

But the experimental risks fail miserably. The DeLonge-led ‘Love Is Dangerous’ sounds like an Angels and Airwaves outtake with Barker on the drums, while ‘Fighting the Gravity’ is one of the disc’s most confusing and disappointing tracks. The experimental rock song features odd off-time bass mixed with grunge and distorted guitar as Hoppus repeats ‘this makes no sense’ over and over again. And he’s right; the spacey track makes no sense with the flow of the album.

While the band continues their emotional downward spiral on ‘Neighborhoods,’ some classic Blink-182 features do shine through. The album is still packed with f-bombs, only this time they’re used more as adjectives to enhance their emotional pain. Drummer Barker carries the album, as he has done for the band’s entire discography. Despite the smattering of weak tracks throughout, Barker’s lightning fast hands make these songs enjoyable to listen to.

It’s disappointing that maturity marks the demise of a band once idolized by millions of kids in the late 1990s. Most likely a hit-or-miss to fans, ‘Neighborhoods’ has its good points but nothing that can compare to past gems ‘Enema of the State,’ ‘Dude Ranch’ and ‘Take off Your Pants and Jacket.’ If ‘Neighborhoods’ is the last album that Blink-182 puts out, they should have just ended in 2003 because it was not worth the eight-year wait.

drbleckn@syr.edu

Published on September 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm