Blink-182 – Neighborhoods

Blink-182 Keep Their Pants On

Do not expect to see Blink-182 streaking through the Nineties-nostalgia party. Twelve years ago, Blink blew up with bubblegum thrash that injected a Porky’s populism into punk’s obsession with the ickiness of sex. But on their first album in eight years, Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus sound grown-up and serious: “Everyone raises kids in a world that changes life to a bitter game,” they note over the emo-tinged metal of ”˜Up All Night.’ It’s like Stifler from American Pie went all Revolutionary Road on our ass.

The band was already heading in an artier direction on 2003’s Blink-182, and drummer Travis Barker nearly died in a 2008 plane crash. So maybe it’s remarkable that the old Blink bounce ”“ double-time tempos, crisp tuneage, self-deprecating lyrics ”“ is intact at all. Songs like ”˜Hearts All Gone’ are pitched between Black Flag and Six Flags (“I’m a little bit shy, a little bit strange and a little bit manic!” DeLonge journals). But just as often there’s sophistication and introspection (check those pianos on ”˜Kaleidoscope’), and darkness lingers at the edge of suburbia: “Gunshots, the punks are rioting/The stage is slowly crumbling,” Hoppus sings on ”˜This Is Home.’ Some Clinton-era pants-dropping might’ve been a fun nostalgia move. But those days are gone; it’s their early-2010s nightmare as much as anyone else’s.