This coming Saturday, 18 Nov, marks the 20th anniversary of Blink-182‘s… untitled? Self-titled? album. Their fifth studio LP, the album sees the band further their transition away from their earlier punk roots. It even had a collaboration with Robert Smith of The Cure!
To recognize this anniversary, Smartpunk Records gathered bands from their roster, as well as friends of the label, to cover the album's fourteen songs, along with a bonus track. The label kindly provided access to the album to TGEFM's team so that we could do a track-by-track discussion. Editor Ed (aka Bad Dad) and contributor Julie are both intimately familiar with the album. Head editor Jeff, on the other hand, had strayed away from Blink after Take Off Your Pants… so for many of these songs, it will be the first time he's heard them at all. With this in mind, he listened to the cover first, jotted his thoughts down, and then went to the original for comparison.
The album is available for purchase at the Smartpunk Bandcamp, with vinyl shipping around the beginning of Dec 2023.
Northbound – “Feeling This”
Ed: One of the most underrated skills of Blink-182, is the way that Tom Delonge can get his cadence to match the music. He can stretch a word out or condense to make it fit what's there rather than opening a thesaurus. It's something he's kind of perfected over their career. Northbound brings forth a straight ahead cover, nearly identical in all manners, minus a 2 second run-time difference.
There's nothing wrong with covers like this that are so close to the original, and Northbound performs the song very VERY well… but I really wish there was something more grabbing on this first track. An original approach would have been a better kickoff to reel me in.
Jeff: This song reminds me of why I stopped listening to Blink before this album came out. (laughter)
I mean, it's a really annoying song. But, to Northbound's credit, they stick to the original formula, but make it somewhat more palatable? I mean, people who know know that Tom can't sing like he sounds in the original, and so much production trickery can never manage to disguise that. So whomever in Northbound got to do the vocals is already a step up, because they sound so much better and… sincere? Honest?
I agree that something noticeably different from the original would've been a better start to the comp. But I would say that just eschewing the annoying post-production effects from the original (especially on the percussion) might've been enough to do the trick.
Julie: I'm going to start this by saying that, while I'm a Blink-182 fan, the self-titled album is definitely my least favorite in their entire catalogue. I feel like it was an attempt to force themselves to “grow up” and make more mature music at a time when they weren't actually mature enough to carry it off.
That said, “Feeling This” is one of the better songs on the original album because it's a furiously fast song that shows off Travis Barker's amazing skills.
This cover is really close to the original, and I'm not seeing exactly how Ed and Jeff found something positive to say about that. When a song sounds this close to the original, I'd rather just listen to the original. Covers should add something the original didn't have, and this doesn't do that at all.
Hey Thanks – “Obvious”
Julie: One of the biggest problems that Blink-182 faced was the fact that one of their two songwriters (Mark Hoppus) matured as a songwriter much faster than the other (Tom DeLonge). By the time they got to Neighborhoods, DeLonge had caught up with Hoppus, but for the first five albums, DeLonge's contributions were uneven to say the least. So Hey Thanks! has a bit of a thankless job on this album being the first band to cover a DeLonge song.
That being said, while the DeLonge's original lyrics still aren't that strong, Hey Thanks! do a great job of adapting this song into something different than the original. The synth-heavy cover almost gives you a darkwave vibe at times. It comes off moodier and darker than the original. Really an excellent cover all around.
Ed: I have to disagree with Julie a bit here, only because I think “Obvious” is one the strongest DeLonge songs in his catalog and clearly sets the scene for the love affair with guitar effects he displays with Angels and Airwaves. “Obvious” isn't a lyrically strong, or even good, song, but the regarding arrangements, this is a gigantic step forward especially from the Tom camp.
I do agree though, that Hey Thanks! made it their own by slowing the track down a smidge and giving the synths a chance to build depth in the place where Travis Barker's drum fills had previously held an ear. DeLonge's signature nasally pitch makes it hard to take him seriously, even when he is trying to show sincerity. Hey Thanks! and vocalist Travis Opal drop this down an octave and in doing so build up the world around the track. Truly top notch cover, Hey Thanks! managed to make the song their own.
Jeff: As we know I'm kind of the sacrificial lamb on this one, listening to the cover before the original. Taking that into account, this song was actually pretty good. I think everyone's right, and I'll be a bit blunt: the lyrics are dull and uninspired. But maybe that works in Hey Thanks!' favor, as their moody, new-wavey rendition stands better with the lyrics than the original. It sounds a lot like it could've been in an 80s-era John Hughes film and, while those films were a bit problematic from the get go, they did have some killer soundtracks.
Afterwards I made it through about half of the original song. It's so annoying. (laughter)
Suck Brick Kid – “I Miss You”
Julie: “I Miss You” was the biggest single from this album when it was released, and it's really one of Blink's most lukewarm tunes. I never quite understood how such a lackluster tune took off so well. Suck Brick Kid add some energy back into the song by basically playing it like it was a song from earlier in Blink's career, turning the emo-pop tune into a raging punk rocker. Props for adding the lyrics from “Dammit” and “All the Small Things” to the end of the track just for shits and giggles.
Ed: The Blink version “I Miss You” isn't really anything special as a song, but it was so ubiquitous with the time that its hard to imagine 2003/4 without it. Its not a meaningful song, even at the time, but it is such an encapsulation of the time. Is there really anything more early aughts “pop-punk” peak than a mall-friendly, completely harmless three-chord interpretation of insincere middle school poetry? Suck Brick Kid however bring it back to a few years before the TRL-infatuated pandering. Forgoing the overproduction of the original and bringing a bit of speed and energy to the tune, they take the song out of Hot Topic and into a hot basement.
Jeff: Hey, I recognized this song! I think it used to play at the bowling alley we would go to that winter (we'd just moved to… ugh… Penn State for my wife to start her PhD program and there wasn't much else to do there).
Yeah, this plays like a melodic punk version of the song with meatier vocals and a much more pounding (over-pounding, though) percussion. It definitely works because Suck Brick Kid's vocalist has no pretensions about what his voice sounds like and doesn't feel the need to fake it with trickery. A much better version in my book. My one complaint is that it comes across a bit as a wall of noise, and the percussion could've been a little more creative as it seems like a “buddaboombuddaboombuddaboom” throughout almost the entirety. I can't attest to it being the same drummer, but I know on previous releases from Suck Brick Kid there are some drumming chops that I would've like to have heard here.
Still, kudos to Suck Brick Kid.
Molly O'Malley – “Violence”
Julie: Like much of the original album, “Violence” is a pop-punker's attempt to write a post-hardcore song. But DeLonge never had the chops to really pull off his influences at that point, and “Violence' is one of those one's that just falls short for him.
Molly O'Malley, on the other hand, transforms the song with electronic beats and ghostly, nearly whispered vocals on the verses. The chorus becomes catchier than the original, creating a hook that was never really there in DeLonge's version. This is a much improved take on the song.
Ed: When I first listened to the Untitled record, “Violence” was the track that solidified my disappointment. This is the song that had me throw my hands up in complacency and give up on the record because “this isn't Blink.” Having had some time for my growth to catch up to the bands' growth I don't have such a bad relationship with the cut. It's a change I wasn't ready for at the time but I can accept it and see how it influenced their future work.
Molly O'Malley, on the other hand, could have put this track out at any time and I'd have fallen in love with it. Replacing DeLonge's nasally near-spoken vocals, O'Malley's breathy vocals, and electronic drums and keys turn this into something much more akin to “Such Great Heights;” a type of indie beauty. I can see this version of this song in my regular rotation from here out.
Jeff: About 1/3 of the way through this song I was fairly certain that Molly O'Malley had done something markedly different from the original. However, four songs in and I had to temper my enthusiasm because the actual Blink songs I've been hearing… well, maybe this isn't something new. But it is. I have to echo what Julie says in her second paragraph. There's an interesting and compelling take to this version that really had me hooked even when I wasn't sure I was actually liking it. That's a sign of quality music when you catch someone's ear like that. If I had to make any changes, the repeating of the chorus for what seems like the last half of the song could've been truncated a bit.
I laughed a bit at Ed's initial description of the song. I'm tying to not rag on this album too much (and I know I'm failing), but it has so much bloated post-production nonsense and, considering the quality of effects hip-hop had been bringing for years, so much of it is just so amateurish.
Homesafe – “Stockholm Syndrome”
Julie: “Stockholm Syndrome” was a decent song on the original album because it was a straight-up punk track amongst a lot of poor attempts at post-hardcore, which made for a welcome change in energy as Blink fell back on what they were best at. But the interlude that introduced the track was the height of pretension. It's hard not to take it as a joke when a band tries this hard to be “serious” after the title of their previous album was a masturbation joke.
Homesafe mercifully spares us their take on the interlude, and instead just jump straight into the song. I appreciate that, but Homesafe's version stays a little too close to the original while not being able to keep up Blink's manic energy. The vocalists also seem to be doing intentional impressions of Hoppus and DeLonge, which is a bit weird, and goes further towards this song sticking too close to the original.
Ed: I agree with almost everything that Julie has had to say on this track, with the exception of the interlude being pretentious. You show me a love letter and say it was written from a war front and I'd be hard pressed not to get a bit attached to it… it's just the overly sentimental weenie in me.
I really enjoyed Homesafe's album “Evermore” and had high hopes for this track based on the way that album is so ostensibly influenced by Blink.
Sadly, this is more tribute than cover (yes there's a difference.) There's nothing new brought to the table at all beyond a lack of sincerity that comes with singing a song you love rather than loving a song you sing, and impersonations that have the vocalists sounding more like DeLonge and Hoppus than DeLonge and Hoppus do on the original. “Stockholm Syndrome” is arguably one of the best tracks on the original record, Homesafe's version… just doesn't impress.
Jeff: I 100% had to check and make sure I didn't accidentally listen to the Blink version first, that's how much they sound like Mark and Tom. Is that a good thing, though?
Sadly, not. This plays almost 100% like the original with the only difference really being the production on the percussion, which is the one shining point, I guess. Afterward I went and listened the original and yeah, I get it, Travis is a phenomenal drummer, but the percussion is just WAAAY too loud. And there an annoying crash (?) use at an odd time when Mark starts his lines that really just seems to throw off the rhythm, and not in a good way. So going back and listening to Homesafe, it's not nearly as present, which is a good thing. Otherwise, Homesafe played this one a bit too safe for my liking
M.A.G.S. – “Down”
Ed: The record is less dick joke and more existential dread as the trio faced breakups, new directions and the general self-doubt associated with a quarter-life crisis, but “Down” is probably the one song that most wallows in its own self-pity. If not for the tremendous distraction of Barker's excellence on the track, this probably would've come off as a weak attempt to recreate the emotive anthems “Adam's Song” and “Stay Together For The Kids” (also the seventh tracks on their respective records, just like “Down” on this record).
M.A.G.S. picks up the pace and in doing so, makes the track way more bearable and way less pompous. The M.A.G.S. take isn't a standout track but it is definitely a step up from the Blink original that stood out for its unintentional insincerity.
Jeff: M.A.G.S. wins. (laughter)
I was pretty certain that this version is not at all like the original. It has this weird quirky indie-pop vibe, made me think of the beach, and the backing vocals are to die for. I bet that they play this song live and it kills because it is so fun.
After going and listening to the original, I'm glad I heard this version first. I agree with Ed's points about it, but disagree about being a stand-out track. Thankfully so far we're seeing more original takes than copycat tributes, so maybe it's hard to stand out in that crowd, but this was blast.
Julie: I agree that the original was wallowing in self-pity, but musically it was a pretty engaging song. But I still prefer M.A.G.S. indie-pop reimagining which gives it a whole new melody and a bouncier rhythm. While it may not have the intricacies of a Travis Barker breakdown, it's still overall a better song than Blink's original version.
Artisan P – “The Fallen Interlude Redux”
Jeff: I know this gets mentioned ad nauseam but comps in general, and tribute comps especially, often introduce you to new artists you may not have had the chance to discover before. I have no idea in hell who Artisan P is/are, but this smooth hip-hop cover was a joy to the ears.
Having not listened to the album before now, and only familiar with a few songs I may have heard here and there, at first I was all like “Wow, Artisan P turned whatever the original was into a neat hip-hop track!”
Then I went and listened to the original and realized the music is pretty close to the original (it's shortened by about 20-30 seconds). But while the original seemed like an out-of-place filler on the album, Artisan P has created a much better song out of it. My one complaint: I wanted it to be longer! I also listened to it quite a few times, mostly because it's really good and catchy, but also because it is short.
Ed: If the Tom DeLonge tracks were here as cliffsnotes to the direction he was going to go on Angels & Airwaves, “The Fallen Interlude” was Travis showing off his hip-hop influences. Its a thing that they did, completely different from the rest of the album. It was a good midway break that certainly works better on vinyl than on CD or streaming, on those mediums it felt out of place. That doesn't matter on a comp, where different styles are important to the flows.
Artisan P does a great job adding lyrics to the vibes. I'd say it was knocked out of the park, but I don't think thats a firm enough affirmation. Artisan P caught me entirely off-guard and improved the interlude into a standalone masterclass.
Julie: Am I alone in thinking that the original “The Fallen Interlude” sounds eerily like Limp Bizkit's “N 2 Gether Now,” leading me to expect to hear Fred Durst and Method Man coming in to rap over it every time? Because of that, I welcomed a hip-hop artist rapping over this track, and was relieved that it was actually someone with better rhyme skills than Fred Durst. In all seriousness, this is a surprisingly good reimagining of a track that wasn't particularly necessary to the original album.
Jeff: You might be? Mostly becuase I have no idea what any Limp Bizkit song outside of that “nookie” one sounds like. (laughter).
Debt Neglector – “Go”
Ed: I remember this song standing out to me when the record released, mostly because of the seriousness and my own refusal to allow growth, especially regarding their transition to deeply personal songs and topics, when a few years earlier Blink was singing “shit, piss, fuck, cunt,cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd and twat… I fucked your mom.” “Go” was serious, it was straight-ahead 2000's punk and I chose mockery to maturity. By now its become one of my favorites on the record and following a few other ho-hum tracks on this comp, I was concerned it would be nearly as disappointing as realizing how big of an asshole I was when I was 23 (nobody likes you then).
Debt Neglector didn't disappoint. Debt Neglector also didn't impress. They kept the song as consistent and safe as they could. This song exists and leaves nothing to really note beyond that. They did the thing, no more no less.
Julie: “Go” is one of Hoppus' songs and, at the time, Hoppus was a much better songwriter than DeLonge so his contributions to this album stand out as significantly stronger. I thought that Debt Neglector added a touch more punk rock grit to what was already one of the most punk songs on the original record, but not really enough to make them stand out as doing something different from the original.
Jeff: This is another one I was already familiar with. Debt Neglector definitely punks it up a bit more both in style and sound, primarily by utilizing fuzzier vocals.
The percussion on the original is pretty basic (I bet Travis was likely dozing while playing it) so, no offense to Scott Raynor, but audibly this version sounds more like how “Go” would've been on Dude Ranch.
One of the better songs on the original album, however I'm with Julie in that I think the excellent Debt Neglector could've done something more with it.
Bad Luck. – “Asthenia”
Ed: Ah yes… the obligatory aliens track on a Blink record. With DeLonge in the role of astronaut it was easy to look at this lyrically as his admission he needs a break from the band but knows he'll go back… or maybe its really just another 4 minutes of Tom daydreaming that he's Captain Kirk with Vans. Who really knows? The song is repetitive and feels like a filler track Travis and Mark allowed to appease Tom.
Bad Luck.'s frontman seems to have a fair amount of vocal charisma creeping out but it almost sounds as if he's intentionally stifling himself to keep in line with what Tom can do on a mic. Maybe I'm falling prey to some production trickery, but I hear an arena rock voice trying to play Warped Tour side stage. I will absolutely be checking out more of Bad Luck's tunes, but I don't imagine this cover will be something I replay
Jeff: First and foremost, Flop‘s song “Asthenia” from 10+ years earlier is better. (laughter)
This is a pretty exciting track. It is upbeat and the vocalist has a voice people are either going to love or hate. It's very urgent and melodramatic and I think it works well. This is an OK song although I got the suspicion (and later confirmation) that the “Should I go back, should I go back, should I?” constitutes a major part of the lyrics and is just too damn repetitive. After going back and listening to the original, I find this version much more palatable. It cuts out the interminably-long intro, and is shorter but, here's the catch, the actual meat of the song itself is longer in their cover (the original is 4m20s [4:20… haha], cut out the 52s intro you get 3m28s… but Bad Luck's version is 3m36s). Somehow Bad Luck. manage to make this song more intense and energetic. The original is bit dull and predictable.
Reading Ed's first comments now, I can kind of see Tom's space obsession here, but in no way see how it relates to the state of asthenia. The lyrics are really disjointed. A lot of these lyrics seem what a high school emo kid would be writing, and not a major label band on the 5th LP of their career.
Julie: Tom DeLonge's obsession with aliens remains consistently hilarious to me. When investigating Hillary Clinton's email scandal, a bunch of emails were uncovered of Tom DeLonge trying to contact former White House chief of staff John Podesta to discuss aliens.
I agree that Bad Luck was merciful in sparing us Blink's original, completely unnecessary introduction here that took up almost a full minute. And I agree that they make it a bit more energetic than the original somehow. But the original song is a turd that's tough to polish.
Jeff: Polishing turds would be a… haha… shitty job.
Goalkeeper – “Always”
Ed: Soooo… Goalkeeper and Mark Rose were the two artists on this tribute I was most looking forward to. Goalkeeper is an OUTSTANDING pop-punk outfit and I've loved everything thus far… but things started to look grim when I realized they were covering “Always.” On the Blink record, this was the track where things officially felt as though theyd gone on too long and honestly, beyond some of the best bass work of the band's career, this is a pretty shabby track from Blink…
I hate to admit it but its just as shabby from Goalkeeper. Even Goalkeeper's original tracks are clearly influenced by Blink and take the Mark, Tom, Travis formula and build on it. There was no building on anything here. I literally synced the original and Goalkeeper version of the song and found no difference. Goalkeeper deserves to display their talents better than this, their fans deserve better of them and Blink fans deserve a bit more originality. I will continue to love Goalkeeper and every other piece they've released thus far… this track just doesn't have the juice.
Julie: I forgot how DeLonge-heavy the original album was, which probably partially accounts for it being my least favorite in the Blink catalogue. “Always” puts DeLonge's overly-vague, unimpressive songwriting on full display here and it, unsurprisingly, falls flat. It's also an overly long song at 4:12. I agree that Goalkeeper did almost nothing to this song, and even kept it the exact same length as the original. While it's a little more forgiving not to add much to a song when the original was good, it's a downright cardinal sin to do it when the original was this bad.
Jeff: Goalkeeper kept the run-time exactly the same. There's some credit in that?
I'm going to flat out admit that I made it through a minute and a half of Goalkeeper's version and stopped. I jumped to that same point in the Blink original and made it about 10 seconds. I've found on this album that sometimes I think Travis does too much on the percussion at the detriment to the cohesiveness of a track but, in this instant, kudos to him for trying to bring some excitement to the song.
Julie: I will never understand the argument that Travis Barker “overplays.” “How dare you make dazzlingly complex and impressive drumbeats?” Do we complain that metal guitarists are overplaying? It just seems silly to me.
Jeff: (laughter) because sometimes a complex fill doesn't need to occupy the 0.5 seconds between every word of the verse?
I mean, he's good. We all know that. But it gets repetitive and, actually a bit boring. One literally breathes a sigh of relief when he goes ten seconds or so with simple beat.
Mark Rose – “Easy Target”
Ed: As I mentioned on the “Always” discussion, I was really excited to hear what Mark Rose was going to put together. I love everything about Downwrite, the music commissioning program he started with Bob Nanna. I love his songs. I loved the way he said LA… I mean I love Spitalfield. To say I'm a bit biased may be an understatement, but I know he will bring what is already a pretty enjoyable little punk song and make it much more magical.
He did not disappoint. I'm struggling to find the words and I'm sure someone will chime in and say it significantly better, but Rose stripped the track down, cut out some of the studio effects and exhaled Tom's words in breathy laments. Drum parts were completely rewritten, filled with stomps and claps. That could've been a talent gap between Rose and what Barker can do or it could've been Rose's knack for compositions (I choose to believe its the latter). Rose took parts out and made it better. It's addition by subtraction. I was smitten with the artist's take on the Blink tune, it stands tall against many of the other tracks thanks to the skillful update.
Julie: “Easy Target” was a breath of fresh air on the overblown original album as the short, muscular punk track gave us a break from DeLonge's desperate attempts to write post-punk. Mark Rose takes an already great song and completely transforms it into an even catchier little pop-punk ditty with a swinging rhythm and new hooks that the original never had. I'm not as familiar with Mark Rose as Ed is, but after hearing this cover, I'm certainly impressed.
Jeff: I've never heard of Mark Rose before, and typically, when I haven't heard of an artist on a comp, those are the one's I most look forward to hearing. This cover was a fun and quirky little indie track. The overall beat gets a little repetitive but, after I went and listened to original I can see why it is that way. It's a catchy version that I found more preferable to the original (more thoughts on that in my conclusion).
A lot of times when an artist I'm unfamiliar with covers a song well, I worry whether or not that the cover is indication of their overall style, or simply them taking a chance to make something both different from the original and what they normally play. In this case, Mark Rose made me happy and excited to hear more.
One Flew West – “All of This”
Ed: I don't think anyone would have believed Robert Smith would sing the majority of a Blink 182 song before the album's release so the inclusion of this track on untitled immediately drew a pretty strong buzz and assumptions that it would disappoint, but it somehow works out so fucking well. This isn't my favorite Smith track, my favorite Blink track or my favorite track off this record even… but it is the most surprising. Blink stripped down their sound to create a melancholia and stepped back to be nothing more than voices of the chorus while they let The Cure frontman shine. It works against all odds and I worry about the poor bastards who have been assigned to cover it for this tribute record.
Enter One Flew West and their carbon copy of the cut. I don't know, maybe they could've done something different, made it more their own, played it less safe… but then again I'm not sure anyone could've made something new out of what is for all intents and purposes a Cure song written by Blink 182. There were already so many chefs stirring that soup, that I believe One Flew West did the right thing by playing it safe and well. Because they did play it really damn well. Originality may have been a 0 but musicianship is a definite 8.3.
Julie: It seems appropriate that, when making an overproduced, overly long, pretentious attempt at a post-punk album with unnecessarily long and dull intros to half of the songs, Blink pulled in Robert Smith, who is a master at doing exactly that. All jokes aside, Robert Smith is a legend and his contribution helped an otherwise terrible record gain some respectability. Unfortunately, as Ed pointed out, One Flew West does almost nothing original with this. I disagree that playing it safe was the best decision on this one, as there were a million more creative directions they could have gone with it. Also, is the vocalist doing a Robert Smith impression here? Just don't do that.
Jeff: One Flew West is another band I was unfamiliar with beforehand, but “All of This” is also a track I was already familiar with because of the aforementioned Robert Smith collaboration. Unfortunarely, I felt back then that the song sounded more like a The Cure demo or forgotten (and rightfully so) B-side.
I can see what Ed is saying, but I think I'm more in Julie's camp. For a tribute album, this song is basically crying out for a reimagining and One Flew West went the safe route. After listening to this I went and checked out their Bandcamp and, you know, yeah… they're this emo-ish pop-punk, but there's a lot of excitement and verve to their songs. Uplifting even in the bummer tracks. I really wish they would've applied their formula here because I imagine they could've knocked this out of the park.
Virginity – “Here's Your Letter”
Jeff: Virginity… you let me down.
This is a band that TGEFM covers a lot and we like them. This song is peppy and poppy enough and that's OK. It's an OK song. I began to get a bit worried that it wasn't deviating enough from Blink's version as a lot of the hits sounded very much like what I was becoming familiar with on the original and, sure enough, it's close to a rehash. A bit louder, a bit more in-your-face, but essentially the same song.
Julie: My virginity let me down, too. So I threw it away.
Okay, jokes aside, I have to agree with Jeff on here. It's mostly a rehash of the original. I feel like we sound like a broken record, not just in this discussion, but in all of our discussions about tribute albums. Make. The. Song. Your. Own. Or else why am I listening to your cover?
Jeff: (Laughter) I know. Why. Aren't. They. Listening. To. Us? (laughter)
Couplet – “I'm Lost Without You”
Jeff: Is this The Postal Service? Sure sounds like it. At this point I was completely unsure whether or not Couplet's cover was actually breaking new ground, or simply a copy/paste of the original. It's catchy and cute in that weird indie-techno way, but I wouldn't have put it past Blink's original to sound just like this. Thankfully, it isn't. Couplet keeps a lot of what makes “I'm Lost Without You” the song it is, but transfer it to this different style successfully and, might I add, shaves off about three minutes from the original, making it much less interminable and pretentious.
Would the Blink version have been better if it followed Couplet's lead and trimmed it down a bit? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not.
Ed: In speaking about “Here's Your Letter” I said I wish this was the closer on the album… “I'm Lost Without You” is the reason why. Christ, do I dislike everything about this song from the pandering and pretentious facade of depth to the way they try to bury the actual vapidity beneath seas of lazy effects. Barker's solo is pretty great, but it's far from his best work here (see the drum fill after the bridge of “Here's Your Letter”) This is nearly seven minutes of filler… and the choice to make this a bookend to the record is confounding. Plus… it's 7 fucking minutes… we're talking about Blink-182. The only reason they should be writing a song that long is if… well actually there's no reason they should ever write a song that long.
Couplet does something very different, injecting a Jimmy Tamborello vibe to the mix. Its certainly an orginal take, and a major improvement to the cheese of the original. The tempo and swapping of effects makes this a much more palatable closing track (even though its not the closer of the tribute record) and its sub-4 minute runtime improves the quality of the track ten-fold.
Julie: I was so relieved to see that Couplet's version was nearly half the length of Blink's. A 7-minute-long Tom DeLonge song would probably be playing on a loop in my own personal hell. I agree with everything Ed and Jeff said, including this sounding like a Postal Service song, which is a good thing. Couplet basically fixed the worst song on the whole album, and that's nothing short of a miracle.
Jeff: “A 7-minute-long Tom DeLonge song would probably be playing on a loop in my own personal hell.” I had to stop and catch my breath after a minute or two of laughing after that.
Eternal Boy – “Not Now”
Jeff: History lesson for those who aren't Blink-182 completists: “Not Now” was recording during the self-titled sessions, but didn't appear on the LP. It showed up as a downloadable track on the early iTunes store, as a bonus track on the UK edition of the album, and then eventually a couple of other places. Basically, if you were just paying attention to what mass media was pushing out in the form of videos and radio singles, this one might've flown under your radar.
And, in a way, that's a shame. While a lot of the studio/post-production trickery is here, this is one of best callbacks to Blink's punkier roots and, definitely, one of the few from the 2000s onwards that I truly enjoy.
Enter Eternal Boy. They don't do a lot more with the song than update it with the tools that current production technology allows. It does make the song a bit better to listen to. Tom's overly-processed vocals are traded out, the abysmally echo-y sound of the percussion of the original gets a much fuller sound here. Overall, though, it's fairly straight-forward and, once again, is that what we want? I dunno.
It gets a passing grade but, as seems to be the case a lot of the time, a world of creation was at Eternal Boy's fingertips, and I don't think the play-by-play tribute was in their best interests.
Ed: I agree with Jeff that this is quite a good song, well-written and performed. (Plus its not a seven-goddamned minute long study in pompousness). I remember hearing this a while after the record released and resenting its absence. It is definitely among the most successful of Tom's attempts at sincerity and introspection. Its a fitting inclusion on the trio's Greatest Hits record.
Eternal Boy continues an unfortunate trend on the tribute in that they don't bring much to the song on their cover. I don't know Eternal Boy, but I've got to imagine they could have done something different and been more successful. Like I've said far too much in this discussion, the band plays the Blink song well enough, but there's nothing of them in it. I'd have liked to hear Eternal Boy perform a song written by Blink but instead I got Eternal Boy playing a Blink song (yes, there's a difference).
Julie: I have to agree that the original was a good song, potentially better than the rest of the album that it never made it on. That being said, I had never heard it before because it only appears on extended versions of the album and the Greatest Hits album. As a rule I consider greatest hits albums to be for passive listeners, and I almost never listen to music passively. And I generally skip bonus tracks because I feel like, if the song was any good, it would have made it on to the album. Apparently this was a rare exception, as the original song was a surprisingly good song, from DeLonge no less!
And I agree, Eternal Boy didn't do much with it, but like I said earlier, that's a little more forgivable when the original song was actually good. But yeah, I would have liked to see them do something more with this one, too.
Final Thoughts
Jeff: I know I rail on post Take Off Your Pants… Blink a lot, but that's mostly because I really enjoyed their formative “snot-punk with an occasional heart of gold” style of music. At the time I saw them very much as a modern extension of what The Descendents (who still had yet to reform) had initially done in the 80s. Like, here was a band that got it: alternating both fun crass and sincerity with ease. While we all grew older and matured, I found the direction that Blink was heading in with their newfound maturity was simply a musical route that I could couldn't follow them on. At the least, I found it unimaginative and dull and, at most, over-use of major label production opportunities filling their heads with the idea that their music was something bigger than it actually ever was.
But, on the flipside, apparantly I'm also an old curmudgeon I'm fully cognizant that there is a younger set of punk fans, and the budding musicians born from the 00s onwards, that hold this era of Blink in super-high esteem.
In that sense, I can fully appreciate the influence Blink has had (and still does) on a lot of the bands that have come over the past two decades. Bands that are excellent in their own right, including the contributors to this comp. The music that those influenced by Blink create is a prize that we may not always deserve, but are blessed to have.
Whether or not our discussions of these tracks indicate our interpretation of success and, after compiling our discussions for this post I can see how we quickly began to sour on the amount of direct covers, each song is obviously crafted with care. There are no stinkers in terms of performance or effort here, which is not always the case with some of these tribute comps we've seen in the past.
Often the phrase “why would I listen to this when I have the original” gets bandied about with the more copy/paste-type of cover songs that we hear, and I think that this comp has a fair share of them. But they're done well. And that's something. Some of the stand-outs truly do standout for both their creativity and willingness to mix things up.
I think Blink fans will appreciate this tribute comp and, hopefully, bring new ears to some deserving acts.
Ed: I agree with Jeff that nobody performed any of songs poorly. I'm currently reading a book by a comedian mentions a few times that his early work was a lot of copying the mannerisms of Chris Rock, the fashion of Dave Attell, and other bits and pieces from his influences. It's natural to want to be the people you want to be like but, until he found his own voice, his own stage presence, his own way… he was never go to find his own success.
That's where we stand with a large swath of these artists. They all showed they had the chops and now they just need to trust themselves enough to do it. Like the movie Muliplicity, every time you recreate someone's else's style identically it loses something, and unfortunately I found that to be the case with some of these artists. That is not a statement on their worth or talent, simply on their ability to create something of their own in this case.
The standouts like Molly O'Malley, Mark Rose, Hey Thanks! and Suck Brick Kid really impressed. They got the assignment. They stepped out of the shadow of the SoCal trio and proved their mettle through original takes and taking risks with the music they clearly held in high regard.
Julie: I'm left at the end of this comp wondering why it needed to be made in the first place. I suppose that Blink's self-titled album had a large influence on a lot of the emo and pop-punk bands to come after 2003. But, for my money, when it comes to the “mature” side of Blink, pretty much every album they put out after this is better. Their first reunion album, Neighborhoods, was criminally underrated and should outshined the self-titled album by a mile. The self-titled album felt like a forced attempt to become a mature band before they were actually mature artists. Neighborhoods sounds like a band that has reached that level of maturity naturally.
So maybe, in some ways, I'm an old curmudgeon, too, because I've never been a fan of the particular brand of emo that this album influenced. Then again, I'll take a newer Blink album over this one any day.
I agree that nobody played poorly. The biggest complaints we had were that too many bands copied the original almost note for note, which does require a certain amount of talent, it just doesn't particularly make me want to listen to it. But, at the same time, like I said, we seem to have that complaint about all of the tribute albums we do. So maybe it's tribute albums that are the problem? (Probably not, but I had to end on a conclusion of some sort.)