+44 - When Your Heart Stops Beating (2006)
A good question of yours, if you are stuck in a time loop from 2006-2007 where blink-182 are still broken up and relive the exact same year the exact same way in a constant time warp, is "So if Tom DeLonge's out doing this Angels & Airwaves (AKA "GAYngels & AirGAYS" according to this anonymous commenter online) stuff, what's Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker doing?" and the answers are literally just "thug shit" and "+44". "Thug shit" consists of Travis Barker hanging out with a bunch of rappers, possibly doing drugs, threatening to shoot motherfuckers, etc, and also consists of Mark Hoppus just being Mark Hoppus, but slightly more Mark Hoppus-y than usual. Would it be Mark Hoppus-y or Mark Hoppus-er? Mark fuckin' Hippopotamus! I had to Google how the hell to spell "Hippopotamus" (I was embarrassingly way off, don't ask) so you better fuckin' appreciate that quip.
If you don't appreciate that quip, perhaps because it was too avant-garde for you filthy charlatans, I hope you'll at least appreciate this album because it's pretty damn great, and on the right days, I'd even say that it rivals blink-182's self-titled album. That may seem like blasphemy but hear me out: This is the good shit. Take everything Mark Hoppus brought to the band, which includes great lyrics (i.e. "The past is only the future with the lights on" from "Baby Come On" off of this album), catchy melodies, and the dark side of his music taste that influenced much of the self-titled album, add in Travis Barker's amazing-as-always drumming, a dose of electronics for flavor, and BAM, you've got +44 or something that at least sounds like it, because lightning rarely strikes the same area twice or some shit. I don't know, I'm too exhausted from Googling "Hippopotamus" earlier to look into it.
Sure, on this album you have the doses of pop-punk you've come to know from Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker, with lyrics that often seem (or in the case of "No, It Isn't" PAINFULLY obvious) about Tom DeLonge, but more interesting than that is when the album switches away from what you expect, with songs such as "Little Death", "Lillian", and especially "Weatherman" as the band explores darker music with a heavy and depressive atmosphere, which can be said about this entire album: This entire album, for the most part, is depressing as hell but I LOVE IT! The three songs above, and like I said, especially "Weatherman" just -sound- like depression to me, and that coupled with the lyrics that are poetic (Mark Hoppus was always the better lyricist in blink-182) that have Mark Hoppus revisiting memories of his life, it sounds almost like an audible photo album of the best and worst moments of his teenage years, wearing his favorite music on his sleeve.
If the blink-182 break-up could be described like a regular break-up, relationship-wise, then with their debut releases, Tom DeLonge (with the release of Angels & Airwaves' "We Don't Need to Whisper") got a pretty cool and cute new girlfriend, but Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker both got interesting, loving, and beautiful girlfriends in exchange. This, like I've said about Tom DeLonge's previous side-project Box Car Racer, can stand on its own as a legitimate band that even people who disliked blink-182 can become fans of, and is probably (of course, in my opinion) the best blink-182 side-project, hands down, and if anything, you have to give it props because Mark Hoppus states on the (clearly obviously about Tom DeLonge) song "No, It Isn't" something I and many other people have desperately longed to have the balls to say to certain people we've encountered in our lives:
"This isn't just 'good bye', this is 'I can't stand you.'"
8/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
