"Finding a light in a world of ruin,
Starting to dance when the earth is caving in,
Set in the sun and our hearts are burning,
Leaving the nest to the back a thousand winds,
We're ready to begin.
It's alright,
A bit scathed,
A bit lost,
I've been played,
I ain't that clever,
a city boy that can never say never,
I got the life but that girl bites like a wolf.
It's on me,
It's only,
A small heart,
On one sleeve,
Academy killer,
Off with his head
In the make believe game of fools,
That girl bites like a wolf.
Are you ready?
I'm waiting to begin."
~The Wolfpack,
Angels and Airwaves, The Dream Walker
This album is sick. I will forever and always be an AVA defender. What interesting sounds. What kick-ass tension and tonality. I just love the taste of aggressive ambiance they provide, it is such a satisfying sound and I think Tom DeLonge is an underrated contender for one of the best rock vocalists out there - how distinctive his sound, how identifiable it's been throughout the years. It's probably one of the reasons Blink 182 got the mainstream play they did.
I haven't read any reviews of "The Dream Walker" yet, and I haven't taken the time to listen to it in full and concoct one myself so this observation will have to suffice: I am in love with this melody. The simple vocal matched with the complexity of layers. That synth part on the pre-chorus into the held out bell tone is the perfect kind of takeoff. Plus, I like wolf metaphors. This song is something of an earworm, one listen will not suffice, but it's an optimistic indulgence, a call to something reinvented and new, again. Easily one of my most-played tracks of the final stretch of 2014, where a get-through-the-day mentality has turned into something much more ambitious, assured and resilient. Uplifting, still-moody and otherworldy tones are quite the match for that.
I will also say, rerettably, it does not appear I have posted about Angels and Airwaves before. Which is a shocking shame and oversight on my part, as "We Don't Need To Whisper" is among my favorite post-high school, still-scene albums. One of these days I will buy it on vinyl and it will sound amazing, it is truly a wonderful little sonic experiment in sounds and layers that established this side project as something to watch with a life of its own. It is a love-against-the-odds saga against space-age sounds. There isn't a bad track in the bunch, in my opinion. "Do It For Me Now" is probably one of my favorites, because its build and crash and chorus are so heart-stopping and its declaration of love is cutthroat.
"And I don't know
And I can't guess
If we're gonna be OK
But now my last wish
Is that you do this with me
Kiss me here and hold my hand
Let me feel like I'm the only one
I know you can
Won't you do it for me now."
~Do It For Me Now
Angels and Airwaves, We Don't Need to Whisper
This album, too, is uplifting, and inspiring. This track, with its magnificent, large intro and and forceful rhythms underneath a blanket of delay, is impossible to ignore. This post does not suffice how interesting I find this album. What is also interesting to see how the lyrics overlap with the band's latest eight years later - laziness, maybe, or so a critic might point out, but also likely thematic inspiration. Sometimes we come back to the same place over and over again because that's where the good stuff lives. Even it feel the same, it is still a new experience to be created, produced, felt, shared, it is still something that can resonate. I'll always come back to this band to reminded of that, and to this particular this record to be reminded of hope against all odds.
"I cannot live, I can't breathe
Unless you do this with me
Hello, here I am
Do this with me,
And here we go, life's waiting to begin."
~The Adventure
And here we go, life's waiting to begin."
~The Adventure
Angels and Airwaves, We Don't Need to Whisper
