Neighborhoods
Reunited and anxious to reclaim its title as one of pop-punk’s strongest practitioners, Blink-182 delivers an album jammed with hooks and powerful productions. Each member had a hand producing the album, and they balance the group’s early energy with the atmospherics that made Tom DeLonge’s side project Angels & Airwaves a sonic wonder. The band’s deliberate wackiness and juvenilia have mostly been dispatched in favor of emotionally true reflections on life and love. Tunes such as “After Midnight,” “Heart’s All Gone,” and the rhythmically sophisticated “Ghost on the Dance Floor” show Blink-182 being the best pop band it knows how to be. The guitars comfort the ears, purring while creating a soothing wall of sound that even makes the aggression of “Natives” a smooth, appealing listen. Blink-182 even courts dance clubs with “Kaleidoscope” and especially “Love Is Dangerous.” The deluxe edition includes two striking bonus cuts with the atmospheric “Fighting the Gravity” and the unfailingly catchy “Even If She Falls.”
It was perhaps inevitable that Blink-182 would reunite, which it did after a pair of tragedies in 2008: the death of longtime producer/mentor Jerry Finn, and more importantly, the plane crash that nearly killed drummer Travis Barker. The band started writing new material in early 2009, but more tragedy followed that…
Discover Neighborhoods by blink-182 released in 2011. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.