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MTV: “Blink-182′s Neighborhoods: Death And All His Friends”


From MTV.com:

Sometime around 2003, Blink-182 decided it was time to tack their dirty joke doctorates to the wall (presumably in their respective offices, which is where everyone’s degree eventually ends up) and press on as a more serious-minded outfit. The reasons behind that decision were many — the new perspective that comes with fatherhood, a decade spent on the road, recording with Robert Smith — though, truth be told, their somber new suits never seemed to fit, mostly because, at that point, they were best known for putting porn stars in their videos and giving their albums titles likeTake off Your Pants and Jacket and Enema of the State.

Of course, in the eight years since their last album, a whole lot has changed. Blink-182 splintered in 2005, subsequently sparred in the press, attempted to conquer the world with non-Blink projects, endured the deaths of longtime producer Jerry Finnand close friend Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein, and in late 2008, drummer Travis Barker was seriously injured in a plane crash that killed four, including two of his associates.

Needless to say, they’ve earned the right to be serious. And on their long-awaited Neighborhoods album (due September 27), they take full advantage, cramming the past 96 months of doubt, darkness and death into just 49 minutes — that’s the running time of the deluxe edition — and doing so quite convincingly. For the first time in their career, Blink seem comfortable in those somber suits. Sadly, it’s because they’ve worn them to so many funerals.

Lyrically, Neighborhoods is the bleakest thing Blink have ever done, haunted by specters both real — depression, addiction, loss — and imagined. Death is a near constant, showing up in songs like the thundering “Natives” (“Maybe I’m better off dead”), the crunching “After Midnight” (“Standing close to death”), and the snarling “Hearts All Gone” (“Let’s drink ourselves to death”). Shoot, even first single “Up All Night” is highlighted by a corker of a chorus: “All these demons/they keep me up at night.” There’s a reason the first song on the album is called “Ghost on the Dancefloor”: Neighborhoods feels less like a rock record than it does an exorcism.

Sonically, it’s practically nocturnal, melding the electronic flourishes of Mark Hoppus and Barker’s Plus-44 project and the laser-light grandeur of Tom DeLonge’s Angels & Airwaves into a sound that recalls nothing so much as dark streets and black expanses, mostly of the suburban variety (the field behind the 7-11, the cul-de-sac illuminated by the single streetlight, etc). Even the chords — and there are a lot of them — are dark, as if DeLonge has dipped his Epiphone in ink. Hoppus’ bass booms ominously and Barker’s backbeats are skittering, scraping and downrightscary in parts.

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. Blink still know how to write a walloping chorus, and, much like the chords, there are a lot of them onNeighborhoods. In most instances, they provide brief respites from the general bleakness: “Wishing Well” has DeLonge going “la-da-da-da-da,” the hook to “Love Is Dangerous” is practically buoyant, and, of course, there’s the aforementioned “Up All Night,” which booms and crunches like the Blink of old.

And speaking of the old Blink, well, they’re largely gone here (the synthy, star-smattered opening of “Ghost on the Dancefloor” serves notice of that fact). But given everything that went into Neighborhoods lengthy gestation — it’s the rare album that took so long to come out that it actually contains a song, “Kaleidoscope,” about how long it took to come out — you can certainly understand that transformation. Blink have grown up, mostly because life forced them to, and willing or not, that maturity fits.

Neighborhoods is a deep, dark, downright auto-biographical effort, and when Hoppus sings “Hold on, the worst is yet to come” (on the bopping “MH 4.18.2011,”), you don’t really believe him. The worst is over. It’s all good from here on out.

“So I can see us lasting for many years.”

An article from Gibson:

Punk-pop group Blink-182 are back with a new album, Neighborhoods (out September 26), and a cross-country tour with emo-punk band My Chemical Romance. So, what took the guys so long to put together the album – their first collection of new material in eight years? According to bass player Mark Hoppus, the band needed to get reacquainted as friends and bandmates, and that’s chiefly what took so long for the reunion to happen.

“I think it took, first of all, reconnecting as friends after not having spoken for about five years. And then it took getting back into the studio as well as getting back out on the road,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“It definitely took time for us to kind of put all of these different pieces back together to run the business appropriately,” added frontman Tom DeLonge.

Hoppus went onto assure fans that Blink-182 is “our priority” – well above any band members’ side projects – and that the guys plan to stick around for the long haul.

“Blink will last as long as we enjoy what we’re doing, and recording this album has been a lot of fun,” he said. “I think there’s something in the madness and in the creative process between the three of us that can be so frustrating at times, but it can also be a massive joy. And somewhere in that tension I think is where the good work from Blink-182 gets done. So I can see us lasting for many years.”

In other Blink-182 news, the outfit have chosen “After Midnight” as the second single off of Neighborhoods.

After Midnight premiere next week

From Property of Zack:

It was announced yesterday that blink-182 would be premiering a brand new song next week, but more details have now been released. The band will be priemering “After Midnight” as a new single for Neighborhoods, the band’s new album that comes out on September 27th. The song will be played on Zane Lowe’s show on BBC’s Radio 1 at 7:30 GMT. Check out a tweet from Lowe below by clicking “Read More”.

Blink 182 details are in: New single ‘After Midnight’ gets its exclusive first play on radio next Tuesday night at 7:30pm on R1.