What year is it? Everyone is playing Pokemon and blink-182 is back. We discussed the latter in the last installment of AFP Music. Going off the first half of the band’s comeback album California, blink may be back, but they’re not the same. Although despite a slow start to a lengthy record, all hope isn’t lost. The last half a dozen or so songs prove that the band is still as good as you remember.

The first bonafide slow song on the record, “Home Is Such a Lonely Place” finds the band exploring newer territory. It has a little bit more of an electronic element compared to what blink usually puts out, but not so much as to earn a comparison to DeLonge’s other band Angels and Airwaves. Another notable characteristic of the song is it’s pace. Despite having written close to a dozen records over the course of their career, blink has rarely included a slower, acoustic song. Most bands have at least one per an album. This is the closest blink has come, the only comparisons being either “All of This” or “I’m Lost Without You” or “Miss You” all off of the blink-182. Despite this being their first stab at writing something so stripped back, the song is a success. It isn’t staggeringly special, but it’s touching and Hoppus sound great behind the mic. However, when Skiba takes his turn at vocals, it’s hard to not hear DeLonge in his repeated “without yew”s. The band knew DeLonge’s departure would be felt on the record and they replaced him with someone who can sing their old songs, but would Skiba go so far as to intentionally sound like him in this instance? Is this the return of “Tom’s old voice”? There are also several other moments in the new record in which listeners may wonder about a possible connection to DeLonge. As blink returns to their format of songs for misfit kids with “Kings of the Weekend” and “Teenage Satellites”, it’s easy to see that blink is still capable of writing teenage anthems sans DeLonge. However, there is something of a formulaic, good-enough vibe to these tunes. They’re not bad, but they’re not exactly memorable. A recent pop punk songs that does a better job at canonizing suburban upbrings is Tom Delonge’s “Suburban Kings” off of To The Stars…. It’s a bit darker, but there’s more variety and depth to it, but musically and lyrically. Albeit, the song is more autobiographical, but it’s success and superiority can’t be ignored. Still, even if it isn’t that great, “Teenage Satellites” is definitely at least good. Lyrically, it’s one of the strongest on the record and it’s another instance in which Barker was thankfully given more room to fill out the instrumental side of things.

The success of the record is again offset by “San Diego”. It sounds like a watered down “Los Angeles” and the whole trope of writing songs about cities is a little tired. What makes the song interesting is it’s back story. Recently when talking about the album on Fuse, John “Feldy” Feldmann, the band’s producer, noted that the song was in fact about ex-bandmate Tom DeLonge. It’s an easy conclusion to draw given the band’s roots in Southern California. Still, it’s was all speculation until Feldmann confirmed that, “the song [is about] growing up in San Diego, having so many of their work partners being from San Diego and having a member who lives in San Diego who is no longer in the band…” Apparently it was Feldmann who pushed the band to pen the song, saying, “…it was a song that Mark didn’t want to write…There’s clearly a lot of feelings involved with having a best friend who is not in your band anymore, having a best friend with all that stuff that went down.” Everyone knows the drama and discord surrounding DeLonge’s departure from the band. It was a long time coming and listeners have been hearing the schism in their music for years. When Hoppus and Barker formed +44, Hoppus wrote “No It Isn’t”, an angry, but equally heartbreaking track, about DeLonge. So there’s proof that he can do it successfully. There’s just no evidence of that here. Perhaps Feldmann pushed the issue before Hoppus was truly ready? Feldmann continued to speak on the song, saying, “Blink put San Diego on the map. If you think of its geographic location, they’re the band that made San Diego relevant as a city. I say that with the utmost respect to San Diego because I was born in San Diego, I grew up in San Diego but nobody gave a fuck about San Diego. It was just like a place and suddenly Blink happened…The song acts as a bittersweet homage, a goodbye to this city that none of us live in anymore but owe so much to, while acknowledging the interpersonal relationships within the band”. For a city so important, it’s a surprise the songs sucks so much.
Another distressingly bad song that doesn’t have the crutch like “San Diego” does of an interesting back story is “Rabbit Hole”. It’s another one of the singles releases prior to California, but despite this prominent position, it’s lyrically unimaginative and rather boring. The opening line of “Dear head / shut up” is shrug worthy. To draw another comparison to To The Stars…, a better way to put it might have been “I’m holding my head is gonna blow up my mind”, but DeLonge kept that line to himself. The tune proves the theory that DeLonge really did take the lyrics and guitar licks with him for Skiba’s part in the song is equally dull. The title track “California” further cements this theory. It’s legitimate dad rock. Not like The National, grown-up indie rock, but rather rock that your dad wrote without a care about how he sounded, simply doing it for himself because he could. It sounds like the words (e.g. “hey California, here’s to you” and “wearing our black out on the beach”) were just spouted out as filler while in studio and ultimately, unfortunately kept. Judging by Hoppus’s instagram, this is probably a fairly accurate portrayal of his life now, but that doesn’t make it song worthy. It’s not that the band has to always write brooding, emo songs, but “California” isn’t the answer. Understandably, blink may have wanted to take a sunnier stance with this new record, but they can do better. They’re blink-182. We’re reminded of this during “The Only Thing That Matters” and “Brohemian Rhapsody”. The latter is another snip bit of humor like “Built This Pool” that the band is known for, in which the band presents both a joke and a nice little instrumental. Both songs sound quintessentially like blink, from the opening running bassline of “The Only Thing That Matters” to the sharp guitar riff of “Brohemian Rhapsody.” Given these examples, there’s hope that the band will improve in time and return to their former glory.

by Zoe Marquedant