You seemed so sweet at the start, but the start's all wrong.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to Blink 182 at an early age when someone bought me 'Dude Ranch' at a car boot sale. I remember thinking 'I like that man's funny squeaky voice', and from that moment my love affair with a certain Mr. Tom Delonge began.
Unlike most of my friends my interest and admiration with Blink went beyond 'all the small things' and 'what's my age again?' - in fact, I've never loved those two tracks all that much. Their music was the soundtrack to my childhood, and I doubt I could ever truly dislike anything they created - but I came pretty close...

If I'm brutally and completely honest I recoiled in horror and slammed the off button within a few minutes of listening to 'Neighborhoods' for the first time.
Here's the irony of it all - the only criticism I could ever throw at this band would be that they have the tendency to be a little, shall we say, 'samey' BUT here they are doing something vastly different by offering a new sound and I'm sitting here like, 'I don't think I love it all that much you guys..." However, once I just quit acting like a hard done by 13 year old, I appreciated the quality of the music as it is, and stopped wishing it would sound like 'Take off your pants and jacket."
It's quite a strange album that smacks of juxtapositions all over the place - It seems untidy and incomplete in areas yet tight and together in others.  Some of the lyrics are beautiful, and some of them seem careless and very unblinklike.
Technically, this is a superb album - Travis Barker's drumming is better than ever, and his love of hip-hop rhythm is evident, particularly in 'Heart's all gone' and 'MH 4.18.2011', the riffs are tight and the openings are original. BUT it doesn't pack a punch in the way that anyone would expect from these pop punk masters - the sporadic, off-the-wall, slap dash and immature approach (think Dysentary Gary) seems to have been replaced by something that feels quite grown-up and mature. Put it this way, there ain't one song on this album that could be played whilst the trio run down through the streets of L.A wearing nothing but a smile (and an impressive collection of body art)...
Yes it sounds a lot like Angels and Airwaves but I'm sure that's because of the change in Delonge's voice, and the introduction of synthesized guitar.
The majority of the songs are catchy, and it's abundantly clear that the band has progressed and has become a brand new band; a hybrid of Box Car Racer, +44 and, of course, Angels and Airwaves.
'The Mark, Tom and Travis show' means something quite different now; of course, it seems only natural that this album would move away from the familiar, home comforts of their old sound now that they are in such different places in their lives; they're dads now, they're husbands (or were, in Travis' case), they each have their own side-projects and, clearly, this has been an enormous influence over this album.
It's good, it's different, it's catchy. Props to the guys for pursuing a new direction, and regardless of feedback negative, or positive this album is going to be a huge success. (I hope.)