Critic's evaluation
It's not over, after all, they've continued to release material with unreleased songs. However, 12 years on from the release of Neighborhoods, Blink-182 decided to reunite their classic line-up and end their partnership with Matt Skiba. Thus, out of the need to reunite, One More Time..., the Californian trio's tenth studio album, was born.
Between thunderous outbursts, a melodic waltz overflows the atmosphere with a purely nostalgic solar clarity from Kevin Bivona's keyboard notes. Travis Barker's rapid pacing and consistent resourcefulness serve as the piece that takes the listener to the entrance of the graduation hall. After all, within this environment there is a shower of confetti, clapping and an invigorating energy of almost indescribable youthful happiness. To give vent to the ecstasy of this new passage of life that is beginning, a good mix of hardcore, from the rhythmic cadence, and pop punk, from Tom DeLongue's guitar, is necessary and present. It doesn't take long for the listener to go back to the early 2000s when they hear that iconic, softly Californian tone. As much as it shows the effects of age, since the trio are no longer in their 20s, the tone still bears traces of that nasal characteristic that shaped the band's storylines so much. Between punch, softness, contagion and melody, Anthem Part. 3 is a description of the change of stage in a life. At the same time as bringing up the setbacks that can arise from it, such as moments of discouragement, fear and insecurity, the track comes with the role of encouraging perseverance, insistence, self-confidence and, above all, the courage to face new challenges It's no wonder that the chorus, sung as a duet between DeLongue and Mark Hoppus with its deep counterbalance, and the final phrase "I won't fail!", said in a tone of imposing resistance, convey all the desire for transformation towards a better standard of living.
Starting with an infamous line from DeLongue, a soft, infectious and nostalgic melody builds up between the guitar and drums. It doesn't take long for Dance With Me, starting with the chorus, to turn into a pop punk ballad, happy with its bubblegum character and obvious, atmospheric, nostalgic freshness. A typical partnership between the vocals of DeLonge and Hoppus, Dance With Me is a youthful, adolescent and romantic song that, between the lines, invites the listener to break paradigms and assume their desires. The track, therefore, is the atmosphere of a real party where bodies meet in a dance with no end in sight.
The velvety sound comes across as a warm and comforting welcome. This softness gives way to a beat that is familiar to the listener, who soon keeps an eye out to identify its origin. At the touch of its first repetition, it becomes clear that it is a sample of Close To Me, a single by The Cure, serving as the rhythmic basis for the new environment that is being built. Guided by Hoppus's deep, slightly nasal timbre, this scenario is accompanied by slightly moving feelings of nostalgia and melancholy. With a catchy chorus whose harmony is now dominated by DeLongue's singing, Fell In Love ends up maturing as a song that is indeed nostalgic and even painful, as it brings back memories that no longer exist. It portrays the memory of the days of passion, of the first meeting, the first touch, the first kiss. The I love you. After a period filled with confidences and the exchange of caresses, it's a challenge to look at each other and see that the image of what is now just a friend is reflected in the eyes. And it is precisely on this exchange of positions that the plot of Fell In Love is based, a soft and comforting song, but with generous touches of regret mixed with longing that is also capable of bringing to the listener's mind the melody of Mr. Brightside, a single by The Killers, during the third verse.
The guitar sounds acidic and electric, like thunderous gusts cutting through the monotony of the night. When the instrumental comes in unison, it's as if the chaos has become a circular, nauseating tide, which flows into a melancholy calm during the first verse. Accompanied by a repeating base and embraced by an intimate but serious bass, DeLongue enters with a somber and reflective interpretation, while lapses of a hopeful conscience fly over the velvet sonar of the synthesizer. Well-divided between the singers, Terrified presents a character immersed in his stabbing sadness, which apparently arises from the moment he reaches maturity. Like Anthem Part. 3, therefore, the track represents fears and insecurities, but here, especially, the character relies on a means of maintaining a sense of innocence and immaturity as a way of wishing that the world wasn't so complicated and maintained the light aura of a child.
The guitar appears in an acoustic sonar that incites melancholy and sets a gray scene. Reflective, downcast and slightly weepy, the melody drawn by the instrument emerges like a great nostalgia, so as to create a scenario in which the character finds himself observing the past through a transcendental screen. Dramatic from the piano's tearful notes, the title track stands out as an emotional, touching and sensitive retrospective of Blink-182's career and its members' perceptions of the life they led after the trio's boom. Bringing up Barker's plane crash and Hoppus' contraction of cancer as events that made the members realize that they missed each other, the track makes you think about why misfortunes are motivators for the fall of pride and the assumption of feelings of longing. And that's exactly what the post-chorus verse, sung in three voices by both DeLongue and Hoppus, as well as Barker, verbalizes, leaving the scene in a complete emotional state that mixes feelings of longing, happiness and guilt. The title track, therefore, comes across as a sincere apology from and to the three members for their absence. Undoubtedly the most significant song on One More Time....
At first as dramatic as the weepy state impregnated in the title track, More Than You Know is already lacrimal thanks to the low notes of the piano.However, after the roars of the guitar distortion, the drums come in with a quick, broken phrase that takes the listener to a completely different environment.Accelerated, explosive and precise, but still retaining the dramatic vein, More Than You Know matures with a syncopated rhythm, lyricism introduced by Hoppus and choruses by DeLongue, while bringing in another relationship-based storyline.However, here the band explores the confession of a man who admits to having used his other half and not having reciprocated his actions and feelings.However, guilt is what consumes him.And it is this feeling that paralyzes and torments the protagonist of More Than You Know.
Fast, pulsating and electric, but not as precise as the opening of Anthem Part. 3. In the form of hardcore-based pop punk, Turn This Off! is like an interlude. Featuring Hoppus on vocals, the track is a hilarious portrait of a date gone wrong. A disastrous dinner that ended with thoughts of what might have happened if the two of them had slept together.
Contagious and fresh like a setting sun accompanied by the breeze of a beach evening. The Californian landscape fills the atmosphere, while a more nostalgic climate than that of Anthem Part. 3 and Dance With Me embraces the listener thanks to the melody stipulated by the overlapping guitars and also by the beat constructed by Barker.Flowing into a dramatic and sensitive chorus, When We Were Young, as its name suggests, is a reflection on the transformation of an individual's essence over time.It's a dive into the mind of the young person who, once soaked in unconditional freedom, now finds himself older, with more responsibilities, but without that freedom and that vivacious glow.When We Were Young is a simple questioning of why we lose our sense of detachment as we get older.
A mid-tempo beat structured by the drums suggests that the listener should then hear DeLongue's voice in subtly rapped verses. With a structure that gives the lead to the drums and their trotting rhythmic cadence, Edging has an infectious, cheerful and bubblegum chorus that clearly shows the effect of time on the guitarist's tone. Divided equally between guitarist and bassist, the track serves as a reminder of the synchronicity between the musicians, since it was the first single released from One More Time....With its playful lyricism about the punk character that involves intensity and a sense of anarchism, Edging is the pure portrait of limitless partying and the desire to enjoy the moment without legal or moral restraints.
It's curious and dramatic, but also unreasonably nostalgic.The awakening of the new horizon has a structure that is very reminiscent of the emblematic beginning of Adam's Song which, here, thanks to the icy notes of the piano, has a melancholy, sombre and intimate atmosphere.Gloomy and with a lancinatingly visceral chorus sung by DeLongue, You Don't Know What You've Got is darker than Terrified because it presents a character who is aware of his sadness and lack of sparkle. It's the story of an individual who, trapped in the comfort zone of depression, finds himself inclined to prefer the afterlife to earthly life. However, You Don't Know What You've Got, with its gray and rainy landscape, ends up bringing gaps of light in the midst of the dark monochrome, as it urges the listener to pay attention to their life, to what they have, so as not to have a sudden feeling of guilt and regret in a moment that allows no return. It's the need to acquire gratitude as a trigger to get out of the cannibalistic chaos of sadness.
Alongside the drums is a sequential, linear synthetic sound. The synthesizer here takes the listener back to the days of new wave, in a way that recalls the sound aesthetics of names like Joy Division, The Cure and even The Smiths. Thanks to Hoppus' voice, with its low bass accompanied by slightly acidic rasps, that numbing melancholy gains lapses of consciousness. Blink Wave has a double meaning, at times seeming to be about a romance that didn't work out, at others romanticizing the character's relationship with his nebulous and aggressively melancholic unconscious. Or, at the same time, an equally romantic, but also dependent, relationship between the protagonist and narcotic drugs.
The duet between Hoppus and the bass makes the atmosphere melancholy, but curiously infectious during the introduction. Then a fast-paced melody with a softly melancholic-nostalgic character ripens on the horizon. With a decisive and imposing stance, Hoppus transforms the song into another exponent of typical hardcore. Fast but melodic at the same time, Bad News explodes into an energetic, bubblegum chorus while presenting a youthful lyricism that can represent either a platonic romance with someone else or the longing for an unrecoverable time.
The piano appears in slowly rising high notes, in a way that seems to represent a warning sign. With its touching harmony and melancholic melody, Hurt comes as a second interlude, a dramatic pause that sounds like the image of a gaze filled with dammed-up tears as it brings, in its reflection, the image of the person responsible for hurting her feelings and making her heart sick.
Although the introduction is light and contagiously playful to the point of recalling the rhythm of Lavar As Mãos, a song by Arnaldo Antunes, after a few light verses sung by Hoppus, DeLongue enters with a harsh interpretation that takes the song into an intense, dramatic and visceral atmosphere, largely due to the icy, morbidly waltzing sound of the synthesizer. Turpentine follows in the footsteps of songs like Bad News and When We Were Young by presenting a character suffering from anxiety because he is living in a mechanical period and feeling trapped by a model of working life with no future and which takes all the shine off freedom. It's no wonder that lines like "we're all just lambs to the slaughter" and "a generation lost and forgotten" define the protagonist's state of desolation and restlessness.
Acidic, fast and aggressive, Fuck Face is in a similar vein to Green Day or even The Offspring at the start of their career. Insane, penetrating, stabbing and dangerous. This is how the third interlude of One More Time... presents itself to the listener: with dirty, disgusting hardcore that aims, even from the lyrical point of view, to silence all the voices that try to repress and ridicule the dreams of young people.
Sweet, nostalgic and fresh like the floating, floral breeze coming off a calm tide and bathed in a summer evening sky. After a soft, comforting melody during the intro, the first verse is dominated by the drum-bass duo with a linear beat and a low, slightly shrill groove. As another song featuring Hoppus on vocals, Other Side is adorably infectious to the point that both its melody and the vocal cadence during the chorus are imprinted on the listener's mind. With a festive and therefore celebratory atmosphere, Other Side is a kind of tribute, a tribute to Robert 'Noise' Ortiz, Hoppus' bass technician, who passed away last year. From there, lines like "they took you away on a tuesday", "10:15 on a Saturday night, it'll never be the same, stage right" and "I'll see you again on the other side" become generously more touching. There's no doubt that, just like the title track, Other Side is an extremely delicate and emotional piece of work, becoming another great asset of One More Time....
Acidic and hypnotic, the synthesizer's sonar comes with a sweetly synthetic flavor, while Hoppus is joined only by an echoing drum beat. A melancholic-nostalgic landscape, the song is like standing under a gray sky releasing a fine drizzle that reflects, in the distance, the last lines of sunlight resisting the density of the cloud. Childhood comes as a song of nostalgic lyricism for Blink-182's early life, in a way that touches on the lyrical theme of the title track, but without the thick layer of drama. Like Turpentine, When We Were Young and Bad News, Childhood is full of nostalgia for a time when it was possible to be free to dream. Outside of its more superficial layer, the track criticizes the culture of imitation in order to feel equal or superior in a society that judges anyone who is different from the standard. That's why the trio explode into sentimentality when they admit they miss a time when people could be themselves. The lack of purity and carefree childishness, then, guide this longing for a moment of lightness. "We just need some time away! Take me back to yesterday!" Hoppus wishes in a desolate tone.
It's the healing of nostalgia. Re-experiencing a time when nothing was complicated, when worries were easy to solve. A time when freedom was the law and there was no fear of assuming your own identity. The nostalgia, therefore, comes not just from the fact that it's Blink-182 in its classic form, but from the fact that One More Time... presents itself as the return of a nostalgic time clip. It's like being able to revisit yesterday without fear of judgment.
Sweet, infectious, melancholic, reflective, nostalgic. Touching. Blink-182's new album is full of confessions, intense rhythms, striking melodies and an infectious drama. One More Time... manages to be everything from a real high school party to an emotional tribute to a loved one who is now in the afterlife.
In this respect, it's curious to see how the trio have managed to create a storyline that makes the audience smile, laugh, jump, but also cry, reflect and get into it. And despite the fact that the members are now over 40, the album is full of the feeling of desolation, lack of representation and annulment, in order to give a voice to the new generation of young people who are now in the transition between adolescence and early adulthood.
Produced by Barker, One More Time... tastes like a reunion and has a touching viscerality as it narrates, especially in songs like the title track, Other Side and Childhood, real situations within the Blink-182 universe. And perhaps precisely because he has been a member of the trio since 1999, Barker has managed to fully capture all the emotion that exists in every comma of the lyrical plots and combine it with melodies capable of representing them.
That's where Adam Hawkins, Mark "Spike" Stent and Serban Ghenea come in. The professionals, each in their own competent tracks, have managed to embody the fresh-flavored, iconic pop punk of Blink-182 with rougher, more intense ones from hardcore and others from synthetic new wave.
Rounding off the technical scope is the cover art. Jointly signed by Eric Haze, Lake Hills, Daniel Rojas, Clemente Ruiz, Jack Bridgland and Skye Hoppus, the work simply exalts reunion. The return of a time of extreme nostalgia. It's as if, from three separate photographs, the work manages to communicate the glances between three friends who, despite the passage of time, remain with a deep and rigid friendship.
Released on 10/20/2023 via Viking Wizard Eyes, One More Time... is pure nostalgia. As well as nostalgia, it's the freshness of the Californian sea breeze, the contagion of 2000s pop punk, but above all, it's the reunion of three friends who never seemed to grow apart. It's a party record that still manages to be melancholic, dramatic and visceral while still representing all the emotion that can't be verbalized by a young person on their way to adulthood.
