Unglued Reviews

Angels & Airwaves’ second album is practically We Don’t Need To Whisper Part 2: despite the critical mauling Tom DeLonge’s post-Blink-182 outfit’s debut received, he’s stuck to his guns, creating more densely layered, grandiose, eighties-sounding rock that combines Joshua Tree-era U2 guitar riffs, sweeping space-rock keyboards, bombastic chiming choruses and effects-laden whining vocals.

So, if you liked the first album, you can expect much of the same. If, like me, you hated the first album, however, there is some hope: there’s more excitement in the opening of Everything’s Magic than in the entirety of Whisper, thanks to its whip-snap tempo, and DeLonge actually spitting out the lyrics instead of droning on and on. Likewise, Sirens goes some way towards recapturing his past knack for a hook, and Secret Crowds actually has a bit of punch to it, initially at least. Meanwhile, the autobiographical Rite Of Spring seems out of place, sounding (ironically) like +44.

However, the rest is often repetitive. First track Call To Arms is a virtual rehash of everything that made the last album so bland, and Love Like Rockets struggles to capture the euphoria DeLonge expresses in his lyrics. Breathe, which offers a quieter interlude, still suffers from being overlong, a problem which plagues the album. Five and six minutes songs are the norm – even the two-minute instrumental Star Of Bethlehem is essentially just a preface to the six-minute True Love.

DeLonge is still a megalomaniac – on Secret Crowds he muses about what he’d do if he had a world of his own – but at least he’s a benevolent one (“there’d be no more war, death or riots”). Similarly, I still don’t like Angels & Airwaves, but at least I-Empire is a small improvement.

Owen Heitmann