Albums by this artist

Blink 182 (2003)

Enema Of The State (1999)

Blink 182

Blink 182

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Blink 182 Blink 182 Geffen, 2003 RiYL: Green Day, Braid

Just to get things straight here, it’s still not cool to like Blink-182. The wildly successful scatological punk trio, originally from San Diego, has made a series of Screeching Weasel-via-Green Day records that your little sister probably owns but you can feel confident they contain nothing of merit. The band lacks either Ben Weasel’s wit or Billie Joe’s tunefulness, and their constant reliance on the same basic melodies and subjects (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, both say “fuck” a lot) have been cleverly disguised by good production and funny videos.

While it's not by any means a good album, Blink-182 it is something of a noble failure, a noticeable turning point for the band. Having exhausted every possible means of masking the their numerous limitations, the Blink-182 members have become active participants in the reconstruction of the band's sound, aided by surprising guests like Roger Manning from Beck’s band, Ken Andrews of Failure, and Robert Smith(!) of the Cure and guided by producer Jerry Finn. Songs like “Violence,” “Easy Target,” and the rather effective single/leadoff track “Feeling This” bury Travis Barker’s drums, Mark Hoppus’s bass, Tom DeLonge’s guitar, and Hoppus’s and DeLonge’s vocals in veritable mountains of flange, echo, and distortion.

Nearly every knob on the mixing board must have been employed to create “I Miss You,” where DeLonge’s chorus vocal whooshes and swishes into Hoppus’s refrain memorably. Too bad the rest of the song is so terrible. No matter how much juice Finn puts into the production, nothing can overcome the fact that Hoppus can only hit about three notes in key and DeLonge can’t hit any. The surprisingly high number of slow tracks minimizes the impact of Travis Barker, the band’s best musician and a punk drummer on the level of the Buzzcocks’ John Maher or the Descendents’ Bill Stevenson.

But as I said, it’s a noble failure. “Down” features a long, almost dub-like instrumental section with some unexpected, subtle polyrhythms from Barker. The backing track to “All of This” gives a rejuvenated Robert Smith a nice platform to be theatrical over, although the late entry of DeLonge’s nasal vocals ruins the mood. It’s surprising that more of the songs don’t follow the formula of “Feeling This,” where DeLonge’s wheedling is actually used to good effect and Hoppus is at his most melodious. Instead there are a number of tunes as unimaginative as their titles: “Go,” “Always,” “I’m Lost Without You.”

Blink are to be credited for their adventurousness in the studio. They are to be chastised, however, for assuming that more active production alone would elevate the album to the landmark level their commentary-included liner notes suggest. Maybe next time they should try letting the drummer write the songs.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.