New Music Review: Blink-182; ‘Neighborhoods’ (LISTEN)

A moment of silence, please, for the poop-joking, loogie-hocking, dong-swinging Blink-182 of the 1990s, lost forever to middle age, a lengthy breakup, and personal tragedy in the 2008 plane crash that nearly killed drummer Travis Barker. Granted, the boys from Cali had basically eschewed teenage dickery for thirtysomething pathos on Blink-182 in 2003, but on Neighborhoods, their first record in eight years, they don’t just leave childish things behind. They lock ‘em in a box and toss the shit in the Pacific.

Exaggeration? Not exactly. You know it’s a different Blink when Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus croon about how “we die alone one day” on the moody lead single, “Up All Night.” Elsewhere, on the excellent opener “Ghost On the Dance Floor,” DeLonge wails of a lost love. “I saw your ghost tonight/it fuckin’ hurt like hell,” he laments over Hoppus’s harmonies, a pounding beat from Barker, and a wall of synths for maximum pathos.

It’s actually not a bad look on the guys, but the problem is they still haven’t quite figured out the new style. For every keeper (“Kaleidoscope,” “Ghost On the Dance Floor”) there are some clunkers that try to marry Blink’s old pop-punky style with their morose new worldview and just ends up sounding like a bunch of 40-year-olds in a Blink-182 cover band. Truth be told, when the whole thing clicks, it sounds a lot more like DeLonge’s Angels & Airwaves than anything. There are worse bands to sound like, but for all of Neighborhoods‘ strong points, these guys sound like a band still coming to terms with its new identity, whatever it may be. And the growing pains continue.

LISTEN: Blink-182; “Ghost On the Dance Floor”: