blink-182’s long-awaited album Neighborhoods, their first album in almost a decade, is getting released this week. Following a messy breakup with harsh words, the band reunited publically at the Grammies in 2009. Since then, they’ve been working on Neighborhoods, they’ve been on the road touring, and they’ve all been keeping busy with other projects too.
In recent years Delonge has put most of his focus on his other band, Angels & Airwaves. Travis Barker has released a collaboration/hip-hop album and Mark Hoppus has produced albums and hosted Hoppus on Music in association with Fuse TV. With the busy schedule, you’d expect the new blink-182 album to be a mess to record. According to Delonge, it was the opposite.
“You know, it went pretty easy and smooth. I think one of the reasons it took so long is we gave each other all the respect and latitude to not only create on our own. But to create during the hours each individual needed to with all of the other projects going on. I think a lot of bands if they ever had a falling out and got back together they didn’t run anywhere as smooth as ours because they pressure each other. There’s really no pressure at all with this, it was just very organic.”
There was an artistic spirit with blink on this record. There was no pressure, and coming back to the band with the time off was beneficial in artistic capacities. When asked what Travis and Mark had developed musically in the studio in the time off, Tom said both had developed some new things.
“I could definitely sense that Mark got into a lot more electronic sensibilities and some experimental stuff. There are dabs of that on the record. Travis got into doing these artful and experimental segues with just drums that would tie songs together. Those are things that both those guys did on their own with no help from me and I was stoked to hear them.”
Musically, Neighborhoods is different than previous Blink albums, but it’s also different lyrically. As for how the band approached this album lyrically, Tom said that he and Mark have their own ways of doing that and they’re different, but just as effective.
“Mark tends to write very matter-of-fact. He’s really good about singing real things going on in the room around you. I approach it differently. We have a song called “Ghost on the Dance Floor” that to me was a throwback to when I was a kid. I listened to these really cool Oingo Boingo and Depeche Mode songs from the 80’s where there are dark and poetic approaches to love. On that song for example, it’s about being somewhere and hearing a song that reminds you of somebody that’s passed on. To me, that’s a kid loving “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo, but it’s just not as poppy. It’s very 80’s. It’s a clever way of remembering somebody that you care about. I approach things like alternative 80’s bands, that’s kind of engrained in me.“ Tom said it’s different from Mark. “I think for Mark he tends to approach things from an academic point of view because he’s really smart. Sometimes he’ll describe things in a much more matter-of-fact kind of way. His words sometimes are really colorful because he reads so much.”
How different the band approaches lyrics can also be reflected in how they name albums; something that’s represented in naming Neighborhoods according to Delonge.
“I don’t know what each guy would say to that. But I think it’s the fact that all three of us grew up in totally different neighborhoods, built something huge, broke apart, and we put it back together. Blink represents all three of our worlds colliding. You’ll hear elements of hip-hop rhythms over suburban punk and hardcore beats and indie-rock experimentation in and out of all of that. It’s really like a big can of all of our worlds shaken up and poured out.”
One more thing with blink-182, and that’s the pop-punk branding that some bands like to wave the flag for these days and others like to distance themselves from. When asked if the band was happy to be shaking that label even more these days that what they did with their last album Tom waved the flag, but somewhat lightly.
“We’re a pop-punk band. It’s weird. I like things to be extraordinarily formative. I don’t think Mark’s that way and I think Travis just likes things to be cool. All three of those things are obviously subjective, but it’s so hard to say what we are now. I would much rather follow in the footsteps of The Police than I would Cheap Trick or a cool power-pop band.” Tom continued, “We want to experiment with musicality and classic song writing. But it’s hard to do in blink too because all three of us are so different. That’s what I want to do. I bet Mark’s answer might be a little bit different. Mark loves what Blink has always been. He’s not scared to change it up but he probably doesn’t want to stray too far off that path. I wouldn’t mind completely leaving that path and going through the dirt roads and over the mountains and seeing where it takes us. I don’t know… I think the ultimate compromise between the three of us is whatever that magic is. I’m cool with however it works as long as it works.”
Neighborhoods is available on September 27th.
