I love music.  Most, but not all music.  There must be specific things I like to entertain me.  But I can find an appreciation for all music, even in genres where I wouldn’t necessarily find myself interested.

I’ve been taken back the last few months to music I listened to at earlier phases of my life.  As I’ve always opined, music marks the way points of our lives.  The Straight Outta Compton movie came out months ago and opened the main stream world to a dramatic departure in popular music.  For those scoring at home, Straight Outta Compton is a biopic about the LA-based gangster rap group, NWA, of the late 80s and early 90s.  That movie got me journeying back to other music from my past.  But this entry is not about gangster rap.

Today, I want to step back into my ‘New Music Monday’ format.  I used to take the last Monday of each month to review something I had been listening to that month.  It may not have been recently released or even new for that matter.  But it was in my consciousness at that moment.  It’s been awhile since a posted something like this.

Strangely, I’ve been listening to the album I am reviewing today a lot recently.  No real reason why other than I enjoy it.  It all started from being absolutely bored with the playlist on my music player.  Despite my recurring boredom, I always copy 90% of the same music BACK on to the music player that I just deleted after declaring my boredom.  Frustrated with the predictability in my music selection process, I broke from the norm and opened a cabinet in our living room which is home for some several hundred CDs.  Yes I said CDs.  I began to peruse the CD titles available at my disposal.  Because I’m a little ADD (oh look, there’s a squirrel!) and impatient, I didn’t make it very far into the catalog.  Organized alphabetically, I made it as far as the letter A.  I use the word ‘alphabetically’ loosely as my wife would disagree with my definition of such a word and the method used to employ my organization.

I stopped at Angels & Airwaves and their debut album ‘We Don’t Need to Whisper.’  That was the choice and is the topic for review today.

So I listened for the first time in a long time and that brought back all of the emotion and angst that flourished and flowed through me from back in the day when this album was released.  Coincidentally, ‘We Don’t Need to Whisper’ just reached its 10-year anniversary after being released in May of 2006.  Call it kismet, coincidence, or dumb luck; the universe wanted me to revisit it.

It was May of 2006.  I was a new dad of only 14 months.  My brother had only been gone 25 months.  My mother-in-law just 14 months.  I had a new house and a new job.  We had only been out of L.A. for 20 months.  My wife and I had only been married just over two and a half years and we had already stared down the barrel of the gun of harshness that life can deliver.  But life was waiting to begin for us and we were ready.

On to the music.  Angels & Airwaves started out as a ‘side project.’  Tom DeLonge lead singer of the pop-punk group Blink-182 wanted to create a supergroup in the pop-punk genre.  DeLonge and fellow members of Blink-182 were on hiatus due to ego and creative differences developed from their MTV-type success.  I would surmise that this album along with subsequent releases has done a therapeutic job of satisfying DeLonge’s creative needs.  Those of which were not being satisfied in Blink-182.

‘We Don’t Need to Whisper’ is impressive in its vastness; both lyrically and musically.  While the frontman and members of this band all hail from other punk and emo-type bands, the sum of their collective creativity is something far different than the whining ‘my parents don’t understand me’ type of music.  If I had to describe it, Angels & Airwaves is exploration rock or progressive rock music.

The lyrics have a Robert Smith-type romanticism.  They are deep and inquisitive and the songs shimmer with love and hope.  They tackle a little bit of everything from war to space to spirituality.  But overall, the stories are entertaining, thought provoking, and always parallel the music.  The musicality on this album has a push toward the progressive sounds of U2 and others.  That’s one of the things I find interesting about Angels & Airwaves.  Blink-182 broke up with DeLonge starting A & A and Mark Hoppus starting +44.  While Hoppus stay grounded in the ‘Blink-182’ stylings with +44, DeLonge sought out a deeper exploration into rich sonic sounds.  It’s this comparison which is a good illustrator on creative differences.  The music on Blink records is economical; fast paced, scaffolding-like structure, and just long enough to make a point.  Angels & Airwaves is a little less economical; meaning longer.  There are longer intros, sparse; yet building up.  As the songs progress, the instrumentation becomes much more lush.  Great guitar work comes without saying.  But it’s the expansiveness of the songs and exotic use of sounds and weaving them together that make this enjoyable.

One of my favorite songs on the album is ”The Adventure.”  This is the one song that you hope to find when you turn on the radio of digital music channel hoping to find something new.  It has enchanting rifts and lifting lyrics that take you to another place.  It’s a call to action.

“Start the Machine” is another great song on the album.  It starts so minimal and sparse in musicality. But it’s vaery apparent that this song has something to do with Blink-182 breaking up.  There’s a unapologetic feel to it.  But if you withdraw the knowledge of that turmoil, it’s a very clear message about relationships and the nature of difficulties behind them.  So many times, we and to stand our round whether right or wrong.  We won’t compromise and find ways to reach a common understanding.

I’m not recommending this album because it’s the next Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ or the Cure and its ‘Disintegration’ album.  It doesn’t have the chops of something that genre-bending and musically challenging.  I’m recommending it because it has unrivaled lyrical depth and musicality previously unexplored in genre like pop-punk.  Hell, it has more depth than even some of the most well-known musical acts of our time.  But it’s definitely not punk despite the members hailing for these genres.

It’s music in the absolute sense of the word.  It’s atmospheric, it’s challenging, it’s refreshing, it’s unlike other things, it’s compelling, it’s thoughtful, and most of all, it’s timeless and takes me back to THAT moment.  After all, great art is timeless.

I can put this album on, strap on the headphones, and lose myself.  Time stops and emotion flows.