November 13, 200619 yr The cd for the new outfit fronted by Travis Barker and Mark Hoppus of the late Blink 182 comes out on Tuesday, and I have to say it's pretty damn good. Of course, I'm a huge Blink fan and I always thought Mark was more talented than Tom anyways, but I still think this stuff is really good. Of course, it suffers from the same thing Angels And Airwaves did, and thats the lack of balance. A&A had way too much grandoise pop gestures, whereas +44 is a little more subdued. It's more like Blink 182 than A&A was, but it still lacks Tom's ear for pop choruses. It's a little too heavy on melancholy. The best song is probably the first single, "When Your Heart Stops Beating" which sounds like Blink 182 at their absolute peak (when I would argue nary a pop-punk band could touch them) although songs like "Lilliane" and "Baby, Come On" do not sound out of place at all. The best tracks here are obviously the most poppy, as Blink 182 was always a populist band, and Mark always seemed to be the one who did it for the fans, whereas Tom seemed more like the "artiste". This of course, does not mean Mark wrote pop gems with ease or that Tom was a slouch in that department, and in fact, I would argue the opposite is true, but on this collection, the best songs are the ones that wouldn't sound out of place on a Blink 182 album. Ironically enough, the Blink related album this one most resembles is the one that Mark had nothing to do with, Box Car Racer. This seems odd, for sure. Still, it's a very enjoyable cd for a Blink 182 fan such as myself, and I suspect it will not take long for this to hit my rotation really heavily.
November 13, 200619 yr Never was a big Blink fan, only liked 1 song from BCR, A&A sucks, so I'm guessing I won't like +44. I've heard a lot about this band for obvious reasons so I'll have to... you know... "get" it but I prolly won't like it.
November 13, 200619 yr Author If you don't like Blink, you won't like this. It's like blink but more emo (and I don't say that in a negative way, regardless of the connotation of the word. It's really the best way to describe it, as it features numerous stereotypical "emo" cliches, i.e. references to suicide, death, etc.).
November 13, 200619 yr I loved the cd. My personal favorites are: "When your heart stops beating", "Cliff Diving", and "Make You Smile"
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