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Angels and Airwaves
I-Empire
By Emily Zemler
Like on Angels and Airwaves’ debut, We Don’t Need to Whisper, which was released in spring of 2006, the California group’s second disc apes the emo whine of frontman Tom DeLonge’s former groups Blink-182 and Boxcar Racer but never achieves anything beyond the mildly obnoxious. The first single, “Everything’s Magic,” is subtly catchy, sounding more like some of the less interesting tracks on Blink-182’s comparatively mature final release, but DeLonge’s go-get-’em sentiments (which are just as cheesy here as they were on Whisper and during live performances) are over-the-top.
The notion that “everything’s magic” is trite rather than profound. Angels and Airwaves isn’t a total failure, with several tracks on the record that are both listenable and fairly engaging, but I-Empire does the exact same thing Whisper and fellow Blink-182 spin-off Plus 44 did. It really, really makes you wish DeLonge and Plus 44 frontman Mark Hoppus would just suck it up and get the band back together. There was clearly something to their dynamic that made things more interesting than they’ll ever be in these new projects.
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