blink-182 - Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001)

It's a reference to masturbation, alright?! They released this when you were like 13 and spent time jerking off to the album art of "Enema of the State" as if to say "You should masturb- Oh, you did. That's.. Okay." to guilt trip the living shit out of you because now you'll have to wait a few hours to spank one out to "I Wanna Fuck a Dog" and "When You Fucked Grandpa". What do you have to say for yourself now?! Early bird gets the worm but you were TOO early and can't do shit with your worm now. Shame.

On this release, despite the name of it, we actually find blink-182 taking a more serious route on some of the songs, perhaps inspired by the warm reception of "Adam's Song" on the previous record, such as the dramatic "Stay Together for the Kids" about what it feels like to go through your parents divorcing, which I can confirm firsthand is pretty accurate with the emotions that it conveys (i.e. "I'm ripe with things to say, the words rot and fall away. If a stupid poem could fix this home, I'd read it every day." & "I see them every day, we get along, so why can't they? If this is what he wants, and it's what she wants, then why is there so much pain?") and is a huge step forward from ye olde songs about watching girls undress from their bedroom windows of yesterday, but don't worry, there's still a fair bit of tomfoolery to be found, just in small doses. "Happy Holidays, You Bastard" is a profane 45 second song that'll have you turtle-heading with internal giggles if you're an immature little shit like I am.

Along with the standard immature, often extremely profane humor and the mostly-new serious vibes, this album finds blink-182 occasionally sounding just as sugarly sweet as they did with previous album's smash-hit "All the Small Things" with "First Date" and "The Rock Show", which were written in response to the record label going "WE NEED ANOTHER HIT SINGLE, NOW MAKE THAT SHIT OR WE'LL MAKE -THIS- DRUMMER DISAPPEAR" which would've sucked huge amounts of ass because drummer Travis Barker KILLS it on this album! There are so many songs on here which are way more complicated drumming-wise than they should be, with "Shut Up" being a relatively simple pop-punk song until you listen purely to the drumming, and it'll make you say "what the fuck" because it's like they grabbed drum tracks from some other more technical band. Scott Raynor be damned.

This album is some goodass shit and has my favorite blink-182 song ever on it ("Online Songs" which is CATCHY AS SHIT) but I still think it's not quite on the same level as "Enema of the State" for some reason. It's just never clicked with me the same way, with it feeling just a tad bit disjointed with the variety of moods it swings between, and a song or two ("Reckless Abandon" & "Give Me One Good Reason") never really clicked with me at all in any strong way, but still, take off your pants and FURIOUSLY MASTURBATE THAT FLACCID DICK because Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker ordered you to, and really, isn't that reason enough?

8/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!