This is one of my least favorite albums of all time, and it is also by one of my favorite guilty pleasure bands of all time. Everyone talks about their growth in this album but during that growth, they've lost the ability to write a song that is enjoyable to listen to. We put this on in the van yesterday and it was torture to get through it. Let's talk about singles, okay? Do you remember the first time you heard "Feeling This"? I mean, I remember turning it up and laughing for hours and hours and hours. Hearing snotty white-boy faux-rap on top of painfully forced production, all eventually leading to a chorus that contains the same exact four chords of every other Blink-182 song (proving that they haven't REALLY progressed) and then a poorly exectured "Goodbye Sky Harbor" by Jimmy Eat World-style ending. Granted, the song still brings me joy, but I feel like it is for the wrong reasons. "Miss You" can't do the same, as once again Tom's over the top pronunciation takes away from the potential of the vocal melodies. I guess. Mark's not doing too well either, singing at the bottom of his range sounding as if he is bored and asleep.
Oh, by the way, did you know that Travis Barker can play the drums really well? Because he shows you at every single second of this record instead of ever exchanging his bullshit fills and "creative rhythms" for some fucking subtlety. We don't need to be assaulted with a million drums like we're idiots, dude. Someone told me that Travis just spent a few days giving Blink-182 a bunch of beats to use on this record and they cut them up wrote their songs around them. Yawn.
Where a lot of people say that Blink-182 progressed, I feel like sometimes progression is unnecessary. Do we really need cell phones that have special Lost footage on it? Or that can download rare AC/DC tracks and wallpaper. NO. We just need to get in touch with each other. Blink-182 have expanded on their songwriting mostly by adding what seems like a fifth chord to their repertoire of four, and in tracks like "Obvious" and "Stockholm Syndrome" it seems like they don't know how to use this new chord to their advantage, to bolster the forward momentum of the songs and keep it interesting. This is a bummer, because you can tell that they WANT to make it interesting, they just get so lost in it that this record becomes a bunch of bland textures, like a million shades of grey. Robert Smith's appearance is atrocious by the way as is their experiments with dub music.
So I guess the question is why do all reviewers think that a band abandoning the thing that they're good at to do half-assed versions of what other bands do better is "maturing." Easily the best song on this record is "Go" which is less than two-minutes long, is a straight forward pop-punk jam, but mostly abandons chords in the verse for single notes on the guitar and has really poignant lyrics about domestic violence. THAT is a natural progression for Blink and seems like one of their best songs ever. A lot of the production choices on this record are pretty cool too, but it just doesn't make sense. Maybe if the new directions they were going in harnessed the fun that really represented Blink instead of such a drab setting, the production could shine in the way it clearly wants to. A band really does have the right to not give a shit about what anyone thinks of their record, but I believe that maturing is acknowledging that while embracing your natural talents as musicians: even if that natural talent is to make very minimal song structures strong and unique while telling dick and fart jokes.
5 comments:
Eh, I disagree. I mean, I never got around to buying this album, but I enjoyed what I heard from it well enough. I thought "I Miss You" was really engaging and worked on more than one level - maybe that's what people mean when they say blink-182 progressed. Actually, I think you're probably right that most reviewers just mean "They're trying new production tricks," but I felt that the songs on this album that I heard (most, but not all) had texture, which many blink-182 songs lacked. Then again, I was never a big blink-182 fan. I also liked "Feeling This" just because it felt like three songs in one, and I really enjoyed the triumphant tone to it.
The lyrics are part of blink-182's trend of having good ideas never really realized into great ideas. blink-182 lyrics always seemed to me to have needed more time spent on them. Did "I Miss You" really need to reference The Nightmare Before Christmas?
So I guess for me, I never felt blink-182 was a good pop-punk band, so I enjoyed what I heard from this disc because it had more atmosphere. It certainly wasn't brilliant, but blink-182 were never great singers or musicians, so to release an album that shows forethought was a big deal for them.
I do agree about Travis's drumming. He never really felt like he really cared about the band, it was just a paycheck and a chance to indulge himself. His drum soloes that I see on YouTube are ridiculous. They're exhibitionism, not masterful playing.
Leave atmosphere to My Bloody Valentine. If ya can't throw a touchdown, don't expect to be a start quarterback. I think that Blink-182's previous stuff (especially around enema of the state) show a tremendous amount of underrated forethought: the songs flow into each other effortlessly, and although little distinguishes them technically and melodically from each other, somehow they can stretch a few thoughts over twelve songs and make all of them engaging and memorable.
I liked "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket" for that reason. I never really got into Enema, and anything before that has charm but doesn't grab me. There are a couple clunkers on "Jacket" and some good songs that I felt could easily have been great (then again, I was given the clean version), but I always enjoyed "Everytime I Look for You," "Please Take Me Home," and especially "Roller Coaster." The drop-out part of "Roller Coaster" is where Travis' drumming is an asset to the song.
I'm still undecided on s/t, but it's probably because I've only heard 60%, and I always regarded them as a slightly-better-than-average band at best.
One area that always annoyed me about blink-182 was how different they were live vocally. I never saw them in concert, but anytime I'd see them on tv or on Internet video, the vox would be terrible and the guitar and bass parts would sound somewhere between simplified and just...off. Somewhere there's a live version of "I Miss You" from when they were on Conan or MTV or something, and it doesn't even sound like the song.
In that sense, while you and I might disagree on the specifics, I can see your point. blink-182 was a band fairly good at one thing, and "s/t" may have been far too overreaching for what they could pull off.
"show me the bathroom floor": I think that phrase best correctly conveys the lyrical hilarity of "Feelin' This".
I did like "I Miss You" though. It has some weird serenity that I like. Nothing else on that album even comes up in my mind as notable.
The first three CDs(I'm not sure how Buddha fits in chronologically, so for now, let's disregard it) are albums that are always fun to listen to and always get stuck in my head. That's good enough for me.
I find this is album is more enjoyable when I think of it as being the second Boxcar Racer cd. You know, because its just not blink I listened to in 8th grade. At all. But I did enjoy the Boxcar Racer cd immensely. So I just imagine the last blink album is just a continuation of that, and it shines a different light on the songs. Tom is still a douche. I blame him for everything.
Post a Comment