ONE MORE TIME… may not be a masterpiece, but it may well go down as a pop-punk classic.
I woke up this morning and opened up YouTube, (as is my morning ritual), and saw that Blink-182 had released their new album “One More Time…” I had been following the single releases over the last few weeks, and was enjoying them, but remained skeptical.
When I saw that the album was out, I opened up Spotify, my baby Iroh came and laid on my lap in bed, and we listened to the album together.
Every release from Blink-182 after their 2003 self titled album ultimately felt contrived. Manufactured to find relevance in a culture losing interest in what Blink-182 was. I don’t exactly blame them. Navigating the world around us is hard enough for us nobodies. With millions of eyes on you, struggling interpersonally with your best friends, creative minds changing, and pressure from record labels to create hit after hit–anybody could make the same mistakes. (To be clear: those are mistakes in my opinion only, and my opinion doesn’t really matter.)
One of the most interesting things about this new album is that it could have been contrived, but it feels less like music manufactured for an audience, and it’s clear to me that this is the music of three best friends nearing 50 who missed making music together. (It’s also wild to me that this is the kind of music 50 year olds are making these days. Time is weird, and our perception of the world means nothing.) Almost every song here sounds like a reference to a part of their past, but it’s done lovingly, with tremendous care. While each song feels rooted in their history, they also include modern sonic qualities that are, instead of being forced and contrived, just the natural progression of musicians living in 2023.
-Track by track-
1. ANTHEM PART 3
This song starts out with an alternative take on the intro to Anthem Part 2 and launches into a classic punk beat, and Tom croons about the mistakes he’s made, and perhaps those of the band as a whole.
“Everything that we’ve tried/We’ll keep waking up to that light/We’ll see rising of a new tide/We are starting up a new life”
And launching into a big chorus that feels like one of the most honest things Tom and Mark have ever sung together.
“This time, I won’t be complacent/The dreams I gave up and wasted/A new high, a new ride and I’m on fire/My hope shit ends here tonight”It feels like a very natural progression from the self titled album.
2. DANCE WITH ME
It’s easy to criticize a band for using nonsense lyrics as a chorus. But this is a band that made a worldwide hit out of “nanana nanana.” I can respect that, especially when the song is fun as hell like this one is. Some younger folks might not notice, but this song actually has vibes like pre-fame Blink-182, Cheshire Cat and Dude Ranch era.
I also have to give a shout out to the outro. It’s one of my favorite things on the album. It’s a classic emo move. Taking the chorus but upping the urgency, and changing the lyrics.
Where the chorus is simply “Olé, olé, olé, olé, yeah, we’re doing it all night long” repeated, Tom replaces the Olés with:
You beat my heart from miles away…/You spin me like a hurricane…/You like to play your little games…Yeah, been playing them all night long/I’d like to have you every day, every way…/And do it all night long
This is so much fun and I can’t help but love the song for it.
3. FELL IN LOVE
This song is funny to me. You see, I’m a big Frank Turner fan, he was my favorite artist through the release of his album Be More Kind. It’s not that I don’t like his most recent albums, but I’ve moved on emotionally, and they’re not connecting with me as much. I digress. On his album Be More Kind, he has a song called Little Changes (it also happens to be the third track–ahem), which sounds kind of like a song from an insurance commercial (but in the most delightful way), and this song immediately reminded me of that. Same beat, same claps, just missing a glockenspiel or toy piano. I could see a mashup of the two happening.
I like this song a lot, and I can’t exactly explain what it is that feels so natural about its humble pop influence instead of feeling forced. But, I guess, what matters is that they accomplished it. I know that Robert Smith worked on this song, and I also know that Blink-182 was influenced by The Cure (as odd as that sounds). Perhaps it’s just a confluence of minds that was a long time coming.
4. TERRIFIED
This song could be a b-side from the self titled album, it fits right in with those tracks. It features the same chaotic chorus stylings with added chords that feel a little “off,” sandwiched between solemn verses, post chorus we get pitch bends on the chords evoking their song “Violence” in my mind.
5. ONE MORE TIME
This song evokes Tom’s injury spawned project Boxcar Racer. Not just the acoustic guitar. There is a melodic inclination that connects to that album as well. But most of all, Boxcar Racer was born of immense sadness and struggle as Tom broke his back. This song hits on the same level, there is a specific kind of sorrow in the regret that they have, after letting their ego, immaturity, and maybe mental health, get in the way of their friendship.
6. MORE THAN YOU KNOW
Here have a solid pop-punk song with a post-chorus filled with Tom’s classic octaves, and a pre-chorus with the same chaotic qualities from Tom in songs like Stockholm Syndrome.
7. TURN THIS OFF!
A byte sized punk song that is classic Blink-182. Absolutely fun, ridiculously crass, low-key kinda gay (👀). The funniest thing about this song is that it’s the classic “stop listening if you don’t like rude and crude stuff” song… but it’s the only song that is really crude at all on the album. There’s a few crude things throughout the album, but nothing quite like this. It’s incredibly self aware and I love it.
8. WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
This song sounds like if Blink-182 did the Angels and Airwaves song Everything’s Magic. Just less vocal modulation, and the reverb is turned down. Solid catchy pop-punk song.
9. EDGING
This is one of the more crude songs, but certainly not on the level they’ve gotten to in the past. There’s a little bit of The Menzingers vibe in here. They were likely inspired by Blink-182 in the first place, but they definitely took their sound in a different direction, and this is a song I could see pairing well with the Menzingers’ album After the Party.
10. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT
An anthemic rock song about regret (there’s a lot of that on this album). I can’t claim to know exactly what the song is about, but it sounds like it’s about Mark being diagnosed with cancer.
“I begged for your forgiveness/I made a deal with God/I took you all for granted/You can write my epilogue”
11. BLINK WAVE
This is the only disappointing song for me on the album. It starts out with a synthesized bass line, and the chorus has an airy synth line driving it, and it all gives some 80s vibes, but it never truly gives into 80s sound. I think the only thing it’s missing is a square wave synth solo, and motifs of that solo throughout. It’s not a bad song at all, but it’s the one that I would peg as filler.
12. BAD NEWS
Every pop-punk album needs a break-up song. This one is raucous in an Enema of the State way.
13. HURT (INTERLUDE)
I am not a fan of interludes, or little skits or anything of the sort on my albums. I prefer an album I can listen straight through without being annoyed. Interludes can sometimes be good, but are more often lackluster.
This is one of my favorite songs on the album.
It plays more like a short Angels and Airwaves song, if Mark was in AvA. It’s spacey, and epic, and uses Tom’s “oh-oh.” Lyrically, it’s kind of trite, but listen, we’re not expecting Mary Oliver from the boys who wrote “Dysentery Gary.”
14. TURPENTINE
I find this song endlessly fascinating.
Firstly, it made me question whether I’ve been pronouncing “turpentine” wrong my whole life, then addresses it in a punchline at the end.
It also sounds like Tom asking why he’s been so immature and why he’s made the choices he’s made. But it also buys into that immaturity, somehow balancing a greater understanding of the self.
The pre-chorus and chorus say:
“Working at the factory/Stick the veins of nicotine/Wash yourself with turpеntine
My own mind’s unclean/Can’t taste anything/What if I’m not like the others?/A broken man, a Frankenstein/What if my heart won’t recover?/I’ll clean myself with turpentine”
Yet, the song opens: “Soaked your clothes in kerosene/Cleansed the mind with ketamine/Slide your mom on top of me,” clearly a self referential joke when juxtaposed with the denser content of the song.
But the song ends with an outro that says: “Lift me like the trampoline/Stick your dick in Ovaltine/Snort a bag of dramamine/Dust yourself in gasoline/Throw up in a limousine/Jack off to a magazine…” and the final line being “Wash yourself with turpen… TYNE…Goddammit,” after having pronounced it turpen-teen for the rest of the song.
A list of things Tom may be embarrassed about, some may be vague references to specific experiences (like “Lift me like a trampoline”), ending with a punchline that serves as a realization that he’s been wrong the whole time. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit, but that seems pretty next-level for him.
15. FUCK FACE
This is just a 30 second hardcore punk song. No idea what it’s about but If I had to guess, it could be a certain angry orange criminal.
16. OTHER SIDE
This song is a beautiful tribute to Mark’s long-time friend and bass tech, Robert Ortiz, who passed away suddenly in 2022. Perhaps the most classic Blink-182 sounding song on the whole album.
I’m not crying.
17. CHILDHOOD
This song seems fascinatingly out of place. Not that the content of the song is out of place, it’s totally in keeping with the themes of the album. But I’m not sure there is another Blink-182 song that is as much of an alt-rock song as this one.
Here’s a weird pull: There are elements here that remind me of the Athlete album “Beyond the Neighbourhood.”
It’s great.
But I personally love when there are songs like glacial erratics on an album. “How did YOU get here?” One of my favorite songs on Arm’s Length’s 2022 album “Never Before Seen, Never Again Found” (AOTY for me–I should probably write an official review of it) was “Family And Friends,” which, like this song, is anomalous, instead of being anthemic emo, it was a gentle reverb laden track with a consistent drum beat, snare on 2 and 4. Easy going.
It does seem odd to end the album on an erratic like this, but, hell, I love it.
-CONCLUSION-
It’s been 20 years since Blink-182 released an album I cared to listen to more than once, and I think that this one is going to be on my playlist for quite a while.
I’ve been listening to Arm’s Length’s album, “Never Before Seen, Never Again Found,” on repeat for nearly a year. This happens when I just don’t fall in love with a new album. I thought maybe the new Hot Mulligan, or Origami Angel might take its place, and while I liked those albums quite a bit, they just didn’t overtake Arm’s Length. I didn’t think it would be Blink-182.
This will be the album I remember most from 2023.