| Blink-182 – Neighborhoods |
| Written by Derek Harrison | |||
| Tuesday, 01 November 2011 09:43 | |||
 Blink-182 is back. Sort of. Not back as in the band we remember from the turn of the century is back. This is not the same band that never made a bad pop-punk album. This is the band that made Blink-182 (the album), which is not the Blink-182 people are hoping for when they hear “Blink-182 is back.” Neighborhoods is a cross between the band’s eponymous album and Angels & Airwaves, which means it’s much worse than their last album, released eight years prior. Their final record was among their best. Some people didn’t like it, but not because it wasn’t a great album, they didn’t like it because it wasn’t a pop-punk album. It was in many ways a continuation of the sound on Tom Delonge’s and Travis Barker’s side-project Boxcar Racer, recording shortly before (Tom said Angels & Airwaves was a follow-up to Boxcar Racer, but he was wrong). The fact is, however, that Blink-182 was a tangent in the career of a classic-producing machine of a band. It’s both unsurprising and understandable that Neighborhoods, the highly anticipated and oft-delayed reunion album does not sound like classic Blink-182, nor that it does sound like Angels & Airwaves, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing. It has benefits over that band in the form of Travis’s unique, hip-hop-influenced drumming and Mark Hoppus’s voice countering Tom’s, and it leans a little more to punk, with flashes of the band’s eponymous album and the occasional hint of their earlier work. The album opener is a huge disappointment. Orchestral keyboards will send any Blink-182 fan into convulsions. When Tom starts singing the first thing that comes to mind is: “How could Tom have become an even worse singer?” It’s possible for a fan to like this song, if they really want to, grabbing on to Mark’s harmonies and the progression-based uptempo rhythm, but it’s a stretch. The chorus, “I saw your ghost tonight, it fucking hurt like hell,” makes us wonder why we ever liked Tom in the first place. His singing in the second track is just as bad, but the song is better, with a Mark-led chorus and a punk speed which might have been very welcome if it weren’t for the muddy, 80s-esque shimmery, reverb-drench production which plagues the whole album and makes a significant contribution to the album’s sound being closer to Angels & Airwaves than Blink-182. I wish I had someone else to blame for the production, but the three band members are listed as the only producers. The album’s first single “Up All Night” sounds a little better, but only compared to the first two tracks. The shared vocal duties between Tom and Mark are a welcome sound, but the Tom-led chorus strips away the noise and puts his horrid vocal performance upfront, a cringe-inducing moment which is best avoided. The metal rock-out at the end, on the other hand, works well thematically because it represents the anger that any Blink-182 fan is feeling after hearing the first three tracks. The second single “After Midnight” sounds a little more classic, with both the production and Tom’s performance a little less over the top. So far every song has been an improvement over the last, and the next track, “Heart’s All Gone,” continues the trend. It’s Mark’s most gritty vocal performance since “Dammit” (though you can hear the strain in his voice at times) and the most uptempo song they’ve recorded in 10 years. It sounds more like their very early material than the sunny pop-punk of the peak of their career, but it’s definitely a welcome return to form, though the album is almost half over by now. “Wishing Well” is another highlight, following on the heels of the stand-out track. The production remains dry, always a good thing for punk music. While this Tom-led track is distinctly rooted in Neighborhoods, lacking the rawness of the previous track, Tom finally sounds like himself again, even if the same problems creep in once and a while. But when he leads the chorus to the next track, “Kaleidoscope,” he’s whining worse than ever. Mark leads the verses of that song, the closest thing on the album to their 2003 eponymous effort, with piano and textural playfulness. The arc of the 10-track album is clear. Each song gets better until the peak at #5 “Heart’s All Gone,” then each song is worse than the last from there. #8 “This Is Home,” the album’s shortest track, has more of that alienating 80s keyboard and a Lada Gaga’s “Pokerface” style chorus which is just sad in its misguided effort to be catchy. The bizarrely titled “MH 4.18.2011” is more straightforward than the name suggests. It’s actually a simple punk song by Mark which in many ways is very similar to their peak period, except that the song just isn’t that good. There’s nothing offensive or alienating, it’s just flat and lifeless. At least it’s a punk song. If the album is shaped like a pyramid, the closing track “Love is Dangerous” should be as bad as the opening track. It is. The two worse songs on the album (easily) are the first and last, and unfortunately they’re also the only two songs longer than four minutes. I would argue that the final track is the worst, where the band took the 80s production to a whole new level and actually wrote an 80s song, with disco drumbeat, phased keyboards, a bad pop melody sung in an octave harmony and the chorus line “Love Is Dangerous” which is the artistic equivalent of suicide. If you’re like me (or any self-respecting Blink-182 fan) in that you don’t like Angels & Airwaves, don’t buy this. Track listing: 1. "Ghost on the Dance Floor" 4:17 For more articles like Blink 182- Neighborhoods please visit the Music/Album Reviews Section of TimesSquare.com
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