Review Summary: There are mistakes and few nuances to California and hopefully next go, blink-182 will stop questioning their age.
Here we witness blink-182 open their eyes again, releasing a satisfyingly poppy album. Ridiculously upbeat and full of cheese at times, this outing offers more in its energy and reminders than it does ingenuity. You see, California feels a lot more like a sideways step from the self-titled, peppered with later Alkaline Trio, much rather than a step forward from Neighborhoods. The nostalgia on this record is actually kind of bizarre. It feels as if they are trying to cover all the bases they have slid through while maintaining some sense of originality with their new line up. Whether or not we can admit it as an audience, this record lacks songwriting that possesses the edge and candor blink-182 once had. Even in adding Matt Skiba, who is often very lyrically verbose, California fails in the lyrical and tonal directions, often forgetting to pack a true punch.
The absence of Tom is not unwarranted entirely, it was very clear that he did not embody the charismatically creative, albeit immature, presence that was the Tom of yesteryear. blink-182 would continue to deteriorate with Tom, so the addition of Skiba at least provides a hopeful future for the band. Unfortunately, Skiba seems to more or less follow Mark’s lead. This is not a bad thing for us fans especially considering Mark is the remaining essence of blink and would want to preserve that quality in their songwriting. Jams like “Bored to Death,” “She’s Out of Her Mind,” “Teenage Satellites,” and “San Diego” represent the portion of this record that almost feel like motifs of their career. While on the other hand “Los Angeles” is the only song on the record that feels like Matt’s style was truly considered. Barring that and a verse from “Sober,” nothing sounds lyrically much like Skiba’s style either. Again, this is not entirely concerning for fans, but it doesn’t feel the line-up is quite yet meshing together as a unit. Luckily, Travis is consistently on point and continues to keep the spirit of the band alive with amazingly slick fills.
Of the 16 songs on California, 14 tracks boast appropriate song lengths for a pop-punk record and the other 2 are debatably short, though enjoyable, joke tunes. Though, this does seem a bit much. It does not lack sense in practice, blink dropped a singer and wanted to have plenty of new tunes that Skiba could truly connect with and get behind in order to put on a more passionate live show. There were roughly 60 some songs written for this record before Jon Feldmann got his hands on the creative process of California. And really, Feldmann’s “Midas Touch” is honestly way too apparent on songs such as “California” and “Home Is Such A Lonely Place” because I’ve heard a few Five Seconds Of Summer songs and I fear the resemblances. What are otherwise decently constructed songs are mugged down by corny production and certainly pander to the listeners with a heavy hand.
If anything is immediately apparent, though, it is that blink-182 felt the need to write a record that incorporated many of their former qualities while including Skiba in what feels like a mildly successful way. I cannot really speak for my subjective enjoyment of this album but on a surface level it does contain a ton of fan service. California reaches out to blink’s entire demographic but does not rope it all in to be more of a concurrent experience of all the songwriters, because in the end it feels quite scattered in tone and direction. There are mistakes and few nuances to California and hopefully next go, blink-182 will stop questioning their age.
2.8-2.9
