Play blink-182 At My Funeral

I heard blink-182’s comeback the same place as everyone else: hiding in the school library during fourth period lunch.

I sat with a few other losers around a computer to watch the music video for “Up All Night”. When it was over, Peter Jones, our gay librarian who was married to another man also named Peter Jones, said,

“Huh. That’s weird.”

My friend, Abby, started the video over again.

It wasn’t that weird. As a comeback single, “Up All Night” makes sense for the California trio: Mark and Tom share singing duties, the tempo is fast, the chorus is simple. That outro too, is perfect Travis Barker: the riff stays the same, but Barker’s drums start slow, before launching the song into the stratosphere. It offered all the things fans remembered from the band’s eponymous 2003 masterpiece. A bit of fun, a bit of melancholy: a midlife crisis.

A Child when blink broke up, I hadn’t consciously lived through an album release from them. At thirteen I dutifully picked up a guitar to learn “Dammit” and “What’s My Age Again?” So even born too late to ride the blink wave, I was primed and ready for their return. I bought the CD, played it to death in my mom’s Volvo while learning to drive.

I’m trying to not let the nostalgia overpower everything.

Again.

Sorry. This one is about Abby.

Again.

 “Ghost on the Dance Floor” opens the album with some airy synths and tom-heavy Barker beats that sound more at home on an actual dancefloor than any previous blink banger. The Angels & Airwaves influence is strong. Every single song (on the standard edition) mentions death.

The first lines, after years apart:

With no attribution on that first line, Tom sounds like he’s addressing the song’s subject. That second lyric is likewise vague. Only in the third line is the speaker revealed: an anonymous she, the titular ghost.

Poets, these pop-punk prodigies are not. But when Tom left the band, their lyrics fell off. Hilarious that the band’s bookish backbone was the kooky conspiracy theory guy.

The genre, and blink’s catalogue, are littered within unnamed women, often girlfriends lauded or lambasted, desired or dispossessed, depending on the day. Their loss is rarely regarded as anything more than temporary heartbreak. Only the Sally of “I Miss You” seems to haunt eternally. That is, until now.

Tom says it’s about hearing a song you shared with someone who passed. Barker found the song extremely moving and has suggested it was about his friend DJ AM who had recently died. Tom has neither confirmed nor denied the alleged inspiration.

The band recorded the album separately in different studios, sending their parts from afar to be mixed and mastered. Since the album’s release each member has disparaged this process, even Tom who says it was his idea. Reviewers noted the way some songs didn’t quite mesh. I happen to think this led to some of blink’s most interesting work. The songs are not a sleek as can be, despite the band’s essentially unlimited resources. Where having the whole band in the room might lead to a streamlining effect, the fractured nature of the recordings makes for jagged, multilayered music that cuts through some of the bubblegum.

During their comeback tour, Mark and Tom would introduce their drummer as “The reason our band is famous,” then depart the stage to let Barker solo atop a giant moving platform.

While this is a little unfair to Scott Raynor’s passable playing on the band’s breakout hit “Dammit,” blink would not be nearly so fun without Barker.

Much has been written about Barker’s style, instantly recognizable for its rolling thunder, chiming accents, and hip-hop sensibilities. When I was peer-pressured into listening to Machine Gun Kelly, it took only a drumroll for me to say, “That’s Travis Barker.”

This song features one of my favorite Barker beats, only ranking behind “Down” and “Not Now.” Once the full band kicks in, he keeps building tension on the hi-hat, letting it ring out more and more. Then a quick trill on the snare, a fill across the toms, and into the verse. He doesn’t stop experimenting with the hi-hat, throwing in variations every other measure, tapping a China cymbal here and there. It’s just plain fun to hear.

When the first chorus ends on that wavey synth, it’s one sharp crack of the snare that brings everything back from the brink.

Barker lets loose on the euphoric bridge, a moment after Tom suggests that only in a dream space can we access again those we have loved and lost. It’s a moment of pure cacophony where the music gives over to reverie, and everything good that was dead is alive again, and we can stay in the fantasy for another minute.

In the second verse, the key line:

We have to leave. It’s that “if” that feels so nice to imagine. If ghosts are only here for a moment, maybe we can tell them exactly what they want to hear. It’s not like they’ll call our bluff, and it’s not like we’re lying. We would love to see you again, even if we know it won’t last.

Blink has always danced with nostalgia. Indeed, any act that outlasts its initial decade of popularity runs the risk of retreading their own relevance. Blink themselves joke about how every album cycle some reviewer accuses them of “finally growing up.” I think songs like “Adam’s Song,” and “Stay Together For The Kids,” long ago proved the band can take things seriously. “Ghost on the Dance Floor” maps the journey and destination of Neighborhoods. By recognizing the limits of nostalgia without falling victim to bitterness, we find some peace with the past. We still have the songs, even when we don’t have each other.

I’ve been reading Grafton Tanner’s excellent new book The Hours Have Lost Their Clocks: The Politics of Nostalgia. You should check it out if you too are hopelessly trapped in the thrall of things undead.