Matt Skiba Talks With NME

"As for the sound of the new material, Skiba said: “Recently started to take inspiration from The Strokes."

Puke

 

Thrilled to hear new alkaline is being worked on

 

If the Strokes means he's finally gonna change his style up a bit then good on him. Hope it sounds good.

 

Sounds like Skiba understands what makes a blink song more than Tom did post-TOYPAJ…

 

Skiba “It’s my songwriting, so of course it was going to sound like Trio”.

I don’t get the concerns over the influence of guitar parts being insipired by The Strokes. I don’t even know two songs by them, but everything by Skiba feels rooted in Trio material, it’ll just be slightly different Trio material on a few songs.

 

Tom brought a lot of his space-rock wankery into blink post-reunion, so I don't see the problem with blink having some songs that sound a bit like Trio.

Anyways, I'm excited new Trio is coming, and can't wait for new blink music finally when Mark has recovered.

 

I felt two songs felt Trio-ee on Nine. Bringing in Matt is bringing in his song writing. Any more it would have felt like songs he should have held back for Alk3. Plus there were 15 songs on the record so you had room to do that.

I was way more disappointed by space-rock thing Tom brought in on Neighbourhoods because it felt like it was too prominent on a Blink album and made me wonder if everyone just gave him his way to get the record made.

You want to show some personal style, but advantage of the other projects it experiment there. Ring back elements is cool, but don’t let it dominate.

 

I actually felt that way with untitled. Even though it was meant to be a dark record, Tom had left for a year to do BCR and then the moment he comes back to blink, Mark is shoved aside and the album just reeks of BCR. I loved BCR when it came out, but when it was over, I was ready for blink and Mark because we had just gotten an album of just Tom except Elevator. Dark blink is fine. But not BCR featuring Mark. It just left a bad taste in my mouth and still does. Neighborhoods was just a travesty.

 

I love Elevator. BCR was cool because it was something different. Honestly, same reason why I like +44 I. Mark’s discography.

I get making a more mature record, but Untitled was sort of a sequel to BCR with Mark. Which is fine if you love that. It just wasn’t revolutionary to me. I just didn’t like Tom dictating the path. It got even more apparent on Neighbourhoods. I’ve also had a hard time trying to get into AvA.

It’s ok if people disagree because it’s a taste thing.

 

What’s your take on Dogs Eating Dogs? Did you give it a spin?

 

I find Dogs Eating Dogs a little forgettable in terms of their whole discography unfortunately. I do occasionally listen to Neighbourhoods and it rolls in DED and I always wanna just go back and listen to After Midnight. That song is the best of that album cycle in my opinion. A little new meets and little old Blink, but definitely Blink with the split vocals.

 

Fair enough. I feel like that EP’s sound was the beginning of what could have been had they stuck together. Still spin it every Christmas!

 

It would have been cool to see what they would have done as a next record. I would have hoped it would have been more Blink feeling and less other projects. I don’t mean in the sense of immaturity, just musically.

I would also be cool to hear the songs they scrapped with Skiba early on.

 

I just can't get past the vocal melody on Boxing Day clearly being lifted from All Star. I have no idea how no one in the band or production side of things let that end up on the final track. It's absolutely shameless.

It's also hilarious, too, but it still mystifies me almost 10 years later that that happened.

 

Boxing Day was really the only good thing about Dogs Eating Dogs. It would have been cool if they went in that weird acoustic direction….

 

Yo Pretty Little Girl & Disaster slaps!