Short description
Blink 182’s frontman is back in his new guise with an album of mature, earnest rock and layered, U2 inspired riffs. There’s maturity in the lyrics as well, as he forgoes Blink’s penchant for infantile humour to address more serious issues.
Long description
After Blink-182 broke up in 2005, Tom DeLonge found himself out of a career, out of a band and with no music in his life. He decided to form a new band and recruited Box Car Racer guitarist David Kennedy, bassist Ryan Sinn (formerly of the Distillers), and drum god Atom Willard (previously of Rocket from the Crypt and the Offspring). The quartet headed into the studio—where they would try anything to find a new sound or a new song. We Don't Need to Whisper—named after the first phrase DeLonge said into a microphone when sessions began, testing to see if everything was working—was recorded at his home studio in sessions that began in March 2005 and continued for about a year. The album isn't the pop-punk hard candy that fans might expect from DeLonge: it mixes guitars and electronics on the epic scale of U2 or Peter Gabriel. DeLonge isn't shy about being ambitious, and he's shooting for the moon with Angels & Airwaves. "This is not a side project; this is the next half of Tom DeLonge's life. If you liked anything that I did in the past, this is very much the next step."