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Untitled's Popularity


blink182enema

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16 hours ago, blink182enema said:

for me, Untitled is a bit of a letdown.

i could go on and on but i'll spare the boards' members. my rants about the album are scattered throughout various threads on this site. if i were to reduce my position to one thought, it would be this: a pop-punk band made an experimental album that to my ear felt forced, contrived, and out of character. i don't like slow songs and i don't like radio rock, so the album was a no-go for me from the start. half the songs are retreads of earlier work, compositionally or melodically. the lyrics 'try' to be more mature, but again, it falls flat for me.

something i've received much criticism on the boards for is that i'd prefer that each band i listen to stay relatively stylistically consistent [i.e. excel within narrow bounds]. i love diversity, but i'd rather have that from a choice of artists. i'd like 200 bands that sound only like themselves, rather than a band trying 200 things.

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I really like Untitled for many reasons, but the main reasons that stand out are:

-Travis' drumming is unreal. This album, along with Boxcar Racer, are my favourite parts of his career. His drumming not only sounds unreal, but it's also super creative and adds so much to the songs.

-Obviously the darker approach to both the sound and lyrics.

-The production is top notch, given how some songs blend into each other and all the weird artsy shit like the poem that's thrown in after Violence.

-Tom's new guitar sound works really well for most of the songs.

-As a whole, it sounds like they evolved their sound. Tom didn't rely on power chords nearly as much which was a nice change. It was nice after hearing such a similar sound in Enema > TOYPAJ to get such a big change. 

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3 hours ago, thongrider said:

MCR were pretty big in 2004.

It was the year I first heard them with that song Helena, but I wouldn't consider it the year they blew up. I'd compare it more to blink when they were getting big in the Dude Ranch era. People were aware of them, but blink didn't blow up until the Enema album. I think MCR's album for that is the Black Parade.

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1 hour ago, Reginald said:

Serious question.... @daveyjones

so you’re a fan of california then?

i haven't listened to it that often since the first summer, but yea i think it's okay. i think if mark had allowed matt to take more of a leadership role in writing the material, it would have been a stronger effort. i do think it would have been preferable to brand the new band under a new name, ala +44. but for reasons of commerce (read: marketing) i know that's not realistic.

the weakness of california, overall, is the lyrics, imo. i really liked the direction that neighborhoods took; it sounded like older dudes talking about relevant issues. mark and matt singing about "girls" is just odd to me. what makes bands like the descendents so great is that as they've aged, they've continued to write material that is relevant to their own experiences. the descendents don't try to write "for the kids." they write what they know, so consequently, the music comes across as honest.

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5 hours ago, Olidamus said:

Its good. But it lacks a lot of Mark. Songs like "Go" are just, not good.

first off, what? but

1 hour ago, daveyjones said:

something i've received much criticism on the boards for is that i'd prefer that each band i listen to stay relatively stylistically consistent [i.e. excel within narrow bounds]. i love diversity, but i'd rather have that from a choice of artists. i'd like 200 bands that sound only like themselves, rather than a band trying 200 things.

i think as an artist myself the work you're making needs to be honest to really be worthwhile, and while your opinion that untitled feels contrived is just that (an opinion), i think untitled feels like an honest development in blink's sound and style. i'm not trying to insult your preference, but if you never grew or changed or at least tried something different, to me, you'd just be a one trick pony. and with punk rock and generic pop music being so limiting, you end up being an all time low, with eight albums of boring retreads. or... cali

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26 minutes ago, boxelder said:

...you'd just be a one trick pony.

and that sir, is exactly what i like in my musicians.

it's like restaurants: i prefer the best thai, the best steak, the best greek, the best mexican, the best burger, the best seafood. i don't expect my local diner to try all of that. i like each restaurant to specialize and do what they do best. and if i want variety, i go eat at different places. i know it's an odd opinion, but that's how i feel. as an artist + designer + musician myself, i think there is plenty of room for challenge and growth within one's style. i still want to look at a picasso or a manet and know it's that artist.

again, i'm lonely in this view, but to me untitled was not organic growth. it felt fake to me the moment i put it on (about 30 seconds into november 18, 2003 after buying it at a midnight record store sale).

all time low *is* mediocre. they're like the seafood restaurant that is simply sub-par. it's not specialization that's hurting them; their food just isn't good. conversely, blink doing what they do best (dude ranch, essentially) is the best joint in town for what they do.

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3 hours ago, daveyjones said:

i could go on and on but i'll spare the boards' members. my rants about the album are scattered throughout various threads on this site. if i were to reduce my position to one thought, it would be this: a pop-punk band made an experimental album that to my ear felt forced, contrived, and out of character. i don't like slow songs and i don't like radio rock, so the album was a no-go for me from the start. half the songs are retreads of earlier work, compositionally or melodically. the lyrics 'try' to be more mature, but again, it falls flat for me.

something i've received much criticism on the boards for is that i'd prefer that each band i listen to stay relatively stylistically consistent [i.e. excel within narrow bounds]. i love diversity, but i'd rather have that from a choice of artists. i'd like 200 bands that sound only like themselves, rather than a band trying 200 things.

I'm somewhere in between. It's hard to keep me interested in a band that rehashes the same thing over and over, i.e. a one trick pony. I lost interest in Rise Against a few albums back because they literally put out the same album every single time. 

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I 100% understand Davey's point. I love Descendents and Bad Religion and they're definitely perfect at what they do. They never change their formula because it works, the only thing they "update" is the message, as years go by. 

But I've never seen blink that way so I didn't mind the change, it was quite the opposite.

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8 hours ago, daveyjones said:

and that sir, is exactly what i like in my musicians.

it's like restaurants: i prefer the best thai, the best steak, the best greek, the best mexican, the best burger, the best seafood. i don't expect my local diner to try all of that. i like each restaurant to specialize and do what they do best. and if i want variety, i go eat at different places. i know it's an odd opinion, but that's how i feel. as an artist + designer + musician myself, i think there is plenty of room for challenge and growth within one's style. i still want to look at a picasso or a manet and know it's that artist.

again, i'm lonely in this view, but to me untitled was not organic growth. it felt fake to me the moment i put it on (about 30 seconds into november 18, 2003 after buying it at a midnight record store sale).

all time low *is* mediocre. they're like the seafood restaurant that is simply sub-par. it's not specialization that's hurting them; their food just isn't good. conversely, blink doing what they do best (dude ranch, essentially) is the best joint in town for what they do.

... the issue with your argument, is that untitled still sounds like blink.

It's very different to what they were doing before but on the bare bones of the songs themselves, it isn't. the structures of the songs isn't particularly different either. and it's hard to argue it's forced when TOYPAJ had more experimental and darker elements to Enema, and they want from that to Tom having some personal issues and writing BCR.

it's actually quite an obvious progression which makes perfect sense. you can have your music be 'your' music whilst changing and evolving. I'd say that's what all real 'artists' do - yes, you have that unique spin that's your style, but if you don't develop, experiment, then you're just rewriting the same music over and over. 

As a musician myself, I've changed a lot over the years - my style has. I'm a singer songwriter for acoustic folky stuff, but I've also been in punk bands. they're completely different but the songs in both are all me, and sound like my style even though they're different genres.

I mean hell, take artists like Sting - The Police had their own unique sonic approach and (depending on your opinion) it worked, it was solid - some amazing Police songs out there to this day. Sting also had a solo career that was quite different genre wise and he was successful with that too - but they still sounded like his songs, despite those differences. 

I think it's odd to expect or want blink to sound exactly like they did as teenagers - when they were only in the first few years of learning how to play, and learning how to songwrite. if someone in their mid 20s still plays and writes exactly like they did at 15, I'd say that person was creatively and motivationally stunted. 

I respect your opinion, ultimately you like what you like, but I really don't see the argument for untitled being 'forced'. They spent a year of their lives in a house together, working on every aspect to create this album - this wasn't a cash grab or a purposeful swerve, this was musicians in a position to finally let their creativity fly and try new things after growing up a bit. 

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Nothing about the smiley face album was forced at all IMO. It was still a surprising sound and very different but TOYPAJ and BCR definitely show there was progression towards that sound. I read BCR reviews from a while back that were released in 2002 and a lot of people thought BCR sounded like TOYPAJ anyway, just more darker.

You have to remember blink's influences as well. They were heavily influenced by Fugazi, the Cure, Refused etc. It was definitely natural, seeing as you can hear all three of those bands in blink's sound from Enema up to the BCR album.

I could never listen to a band that writes the same album constantly. It's why I can't get into newer albums released by the Offspring, New Found Glory, Rancid or whatever. Every blink album sounds different to each other. The only ones that sound kinda close are TOYPAJ and Enema IMO. That probably explains why there is such a massive divide in what blink fans want.

You can't compare music to food from restaurants like what Davey is saying IMO. Music is an art and a way to express yourself. McDonalds is always gonna be the same because it's what works. They aren't gonna change their formula. Music though is completely different. Every 5 years, the music scene is changing. If blink kept doing Enema, then they'd be a shadow of what they once were. They'd be what the Offspring are nowadays. The formula has to be changed in music for the artists own sake as well as the fans own sake. Imagine if the Beatles didn't change? Or the Who? Or the Beach Boys? They're artists. They wanna change and that happens as they grow older. They become influenced by other things. They lose interest of the things that they once loved.

There's also no way that the smiley face album was some sell out thing either, considering there was no music or band that sounded close to that album. Blink themselves were surprised that I Miss You was a hit. They also would never choose Robert Smith out of everyone to be a guest singer either. Blink released the album before pop punk/punk rock bands started doing darker and heavy stuff too. Tom wanted to do that with TOYPAJ anyway, so to an extent you could say blink were on it like 4-5 years before that cringe emo hype train. Blink were the trendsetters, not people who jumped on the bandwagon.

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14 hours ago, Kay said:

I really don't see the argument for untitled being 'forced'.

that's ok, it's just how the album sounded to me. i put it on in november 2003 and wanted to turn it off immediately. yuck. enema was a shock to hear too, but less so.

"i think it's odd to expect or want blink to sound exactly like they did as teenagers." that's an extreme. i think of bands like the descendents and bad religion as excellent examples within the punk genre of the kind of organic growth over time that i'm talking about. to my ears, blink strayed too far with untitled. totally subjective, just opinion. but that's my view.

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