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By Yang-Yi Goh
In the trailer for Blink-182’s comeback LP, One More Time. . . , which arrives this Friday, interviewer Zane Lowe turns to Travis Barker and sincerely exclaims, “You produced this album. “
Based on the handful of tracks the band has previously seen so far, that holds true: Barker, the virtuoso Blink drummer who has spent the last few years churning out Blink-mimicking pop-punk-lite records for Machine Gun Kelly and Avril Lavigne. , he nevertheless had the possibility of applying his formula for success to the original article. It energized the One More Time sessions. . . recruiting a coterie of successful songwriters like Aldae, who co-wrote much of Justin Bieber’s new album, and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, whose target audience for his own band is the one who chooses Jeep’s music. The effects sound, to paraphrase Lowe, as if they were produced to be made: the songs are brilliant, effective, and largely innocuous.
That turns out to be expected with all this previous Blink reunion, sparked by founding guitarist-turned-UFO Tom Delonge’s return to the belated fold last year after jumping in (for the second time). The band’s wonderful performances at Coachella and the gigantic global excursion that followed seemed loud and festive, but also a bit shallow, their first genuine foray into the genuine of sympathetic, legacy acts. And while it’s hard to blame Blink-182, a harmonious, drama-free third act, God knows they’ve been through enough, with bassist Mark Hoppus overcoming a level four lymphoma, Barker’s harrowing plane crash in 2008, and Delonge’s well-documented struggles with painkiller addiction: there’s at least one argument. It is evident that the band’s musical output is greatest when its members are a little more at odds with each other creatively.
For proof, just look at the last work Blink scrapped before Delonge’s most recent decomposition: 2012’s Dogs Eating Dogs, a five-song EP that easily ranks as the most overlooked and underrated entry in the band’s discography. A year earlier, Neighbourhoods, the band’s last album after their initial breakup in 2005, had been a publicity flop, forcing them to join their longtime label. The community problem, Barker argued at the time, was a literal lack of cohesion; Delonge had recorded their parts in San Diego, Hoppus and Barker had recorded theirs in Los Angeles, and the trio exchanged tracks via email until they were done. “There are certain songs in [Neighborhoods] that I like, but for the most part we were disconnected,” Barker told Rolling Stone in 2012. “When we’re not in the studio together, you don’t have a chance to relax each other. “
Unsigned and with doubts about the future, the trio huddled into a studio together for a few days in November 2012 and attempted to reconnect as a band. The years they had spent apart in the late 2000s had deepened and exaggerated their individual characters. almost to the point of caricature. Delonge had spent that time in front of strobe lamps with Angels
“Quand j’était jeune,” the EP’s opening track, encapsulates Delonge’s existential intoxication with a hard-hitting, Hoppus-assisted chorus. The title track turns this on its head completely, enlivening Hoppus’s dizzying verses with the occasional wail of Delonge’s anthem. Barker’s propensity for roaring synths and booming fills shines loud and clear on the progressive “Disaster,” while “Boxing Day” embodies Hoppus’s signature ambition to make 44 a kind of pop-punk mail service. When Yelawolf appears as an unfortunate guest on the Delonge-directed “Pretty Little Girl,” you’re almost in a position to forgive him as a quirky nod to Barker’s hip-hop pursuits. The songs are all the same. Blink has been making a song since his primordial days at Kung Fu Records (falling in love with women, breaking up with women, getting back together with women) but they’re hairier, messier, more experimental and complicated. Dogs Eating Dogs blazed an exciting new path for Blink, then the band broke up a few years later and never fully materialized.
There’s still hope for One More Time – “More Than You Know” has that jagged, biting power to the rafters – however, most of the songs released so far have been overpolished and seem more destined for a comeback. – a nostalgia for the essentials rather than hard-won progress. Perhaps, once the euphoria of this great assembly has died down a bit, Blink-182 will return to the task of figuring out who should be next. For now, though, we’ve got Dogs Eating Dogs as a tantalizing taste of what might be to come.
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