Review Summary: Catharsis
One More Time, despite its corniness and nostalgia-baiting, is a very cathartic experience.
Let’s put all the cards on the table: when your favorite band breaks up, it can cut deep. It can leave an open wound that time mends into a scar, especially when it’s a band that defined a chapter of your life. Take that sincere proclamation however you wish.
Time marched on, I grew up, and I had long let go of the dream that Blink-182 would provide another album to place in the pantheon of their genre classics….but then
Anthem Part 3 happened. As did the rest of the album. And now here I stand, surprised and delighted, to convince you that they’ve done it.
One More Time delivers the elegiac revival that few thought possible, a threading of the needle that proves the reunion of the band was more than just a publicity stunt but a reaffirmation of quality and passion.
If you had told me a month ago that "Anthem Part 3" would be better than "Anthem Part 2", I would’ve tossed your backwards hat in the trash. The title signals the song’s mission statement, announcing the band’s return to their glory days at the turn of the millennium. It’s quite the shot to call, but from the first moment that Travis Barker’s blistering drums kick in, you can sense something palpable, an awakening perhaps, that this time, things are different.
It’s nostalgia - there’s no need to be coy about it. The past 10 years have felt tough for many, so by
different, I mean
as things once were. These roots of nostalgia take hold immediately with the sound of the album. Much has been made of its mixing, with many critics pegging the drums as being too dominant. Ironically, Blink’s success can largely be attributed to their refutation of the notion that drums only exist to create a subservient stage for the melodies to stand upon. Travis is certainly prioritized in the mix, but he alone brings a thrill to every track, and has done so for decades. He’s a punk percussion virtuoso, taking risks at every turn while never missing, not even once.
He has been the anchor at the heart of the band throughout their complicated history, and it’s beautifully fitting that the opening track captures that beating heart of Blink-182 completely. The band makes no quiet of their situation, grafting their foibles and public conflicts onto a more broadly relatable lyrical theme of redemption.
“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 old *** ends here tonight.”
From the break-ups to Mark Hoppus’ cancer diagnosis to Travis’s plane crash, the band has plenty of life experiences to tether their emotionally sincere music to. I won’t soon forget where I was the first time I heard that song. These themes are at their clearest during the title track, "One More Time", where frustratingly basic songwriting sluggishly carries along a rather moving summary of amends that the band has worked through. A working understanding of the band’s behind-the-scenes story elevates the album’s lyrical themes with crucial context, which may hinder appreciation among more casual fans.
Don’t worry completely; if you haven’t been obsessively following the Blink-182 subreddit since their surprise ‘09 Grammys appearance, many of these new songs graciously pick up right where they left off all those years ago. "When We Were Young" doubles down on the corny Blink brand of simple romance, cutting it with just the right amount of self-awareness that permits listeners to sing along tongue-in-cheek.
“Do you know…..that your eyes…..are like stars?”
The song also highlights the band’s knack for slotting in deftly cathartic instrumental sections in the bridges of otherwise middling songs, harkening back to 2001’s "Give Me One Good Reason".
"Dance With Me" is an expertly crafted Blink single, hiding the subtext of having sex underneath approximately one millimeter of anthemic pop-punk songwriting. Call it a miracle that 40-year-old men can sing about ***ing their wives without it being cringey, but I will gleefully echo olé. However, their attempts at sugary singalong cheese don’t always congeal, as heard in the dreadfully plain "Fell in Love", whose song title only barely captures its painful effortlessness. These na-nas are no-nos, and the clap-claps are claptrap.
Nevertheless, the return of Tom DeLonge does bring a more experimental and original selection of tracks on the whole. "Turpentine" quickly became a fan-favorite for its shifting inflections and bouncy rhythms. "Terrified" is the unfinished Boxcar Racer track rumored to be gestating for decades, and its emo heritage is clearly heard and appreciated by fans of the subgenre.
What is perhaps most pleasing about the album is its confident grasp of the pop-punk musical tenets that the band pioneered decades ago, seen often on the Mark-led tracks. The blistering verses that soar into shimmering melodic pre-choruses on "Bad News" and "Other Side" are humble reclamations of that hard-earned throne.
The genre has iterated beautifully since Blink’s heyday, as bands like The Wonder Years sought to subvert the saccharine sound with lyrics about not forcing happiness directly, instead fighting the depression with more subtle and sophisticated music and means. Blink-182 come from a different era, one of boy bands and tits on TV, and with
One More Time, they’re hoping to prove the forgotten value of the old way - forcing happiness - with thoughtful reinventions of the juvenile perspectives that we let go of as we grow older.
"Childhood" ends the album as the ambitious closer that "California" completely fumbled. Despite that praise, the song is in no short supply of completely anodyne observations about coming of age and the loss of innocence…
“Remember when we were young
And we'd laugh at everything?”
…and I really wish these lyrics were handled better. The chorus is similarly facile, questioning where our childhoods went, but I admit that the chorus's overwhelming sonic power has kept the tune echoing in my head, inevitably accompanied by its sentiment.
At the song’s conclusion, as you check your Spotify to see the time-marker a breath away from the end, the band slips in one more powerful surprise; a delicate, lullaby-like electronic piece hums to life, gently placing me back on the couch of my childhood home, watching Rugrats, playing games, before I knew anything. Travis’ drumming kicks back in to fast-forward me through the ensuing sixteen years of my life, going through school, growing up, getting in trouble, falling in love, and finding myself. Quietly, the album comes to an end.
As I near 30,
One More Time feels like the elegiac closing of a chapter in my life. Perhaps it’s the closure that I specifically needed in my life right now. I can admit that. With this album, I feel like I get to go back, if only for a brief moment, to the time when my entire life lay ahead of me. To the time when my worries were few and romance was high. One more time.
