MUSIC

MUSIC REVIEW . Angels and Airwaves . I-Empire

To give you an idea of how out of the popular music scene I am, when I initially received a notice about Angels and Airwaves’ I-Empire, I turned it down. I thought to myself, “Who are these guys? That dude with the glasses looks like he’s from Devo. And this 70’s throwback cover? I don’t really have time to check out their album.” Then I started to hear “Everything’s Magic” on the radio, and figured it was a new effort by Blink. Only on searching YouTube did I find out that it was by Angels and Airwaves. Long story short, I went back and accepted the album for review.

Angels and Airwaves is sort of the logical extension of Tom DeLonge’s songwriting following his increasingly verbose tracks on the last Blink album. But unlike the pop-punk blink, this one is somewhere between pop, epic rock, and new wave. In fact, these tracks are about as far as you could get from the old Blink songs about masturbating in trees, prank calls, Christmas eve spoilsports, and killing yourself. Almost all are love songs of some sort, and most are actually well written and catchy. There’s a good amount of melodic bleed between tracks, leading me to be uncertain of the exact title to the songs I found going through my head (While I was listening to the album Kris actually said something to the effect of “Sounds nice, but do they have more than one song?”), but never to the heinously obvious degree of Aerosmith’s Cryin/Crazy repackaging. Furthermore, the album features the most synthesizers this side of OMD. Since I kinda like OMD, this was actually cool.

As to the standout tracks, I actually quite liked the first half of the album. “Everything’s Magic” (of course), “Breathe”, “Love Like Rockets”, “Secret Crowds”, and “Sirens” prove rather infectious. “Sirens” sounds quite a lot like Buddha era Blink, “Love Like Rockets” seemed like a lost teen comedy theme, and “Breathe” was a simple but heartfelt love song, reminding me of the types of songs I make up to sing to Kris. The latter half of the album is a bit less interesting, but I really dug the 44 second instrumental “Jumping Rooftops”, and the final track, “Heaven”, reminded me of Satriani, for better of for worse.

All in all, I-Empire is a pleasant effort from Angels and Airwaves. I don’t know how it will hold up in my collection over time, but for right now it provides quite a decent listen.

About the Author:

Chris Nelson has a appetite for the offbeat. He has been a devoted fan of Puffy for the past five years. He realizes this review may be a bit overexcited, but he is still riding high on Love Psychedelico’s No War, Peace, Love vibe. Rock on.