Angels and Airwaves Band • Page 144

Ilan absolutely kills it with the harmonies on this album

 

Tom has been so fortunate to have had a consistent group of band mates over the years. A mean having had Travis, Atom and Ilan who are all some of the best drummers in the industry is pretty wild.

To me this album is what AVA was supposed to be initially. You can see how far they’ve progressed musically. Looking back at previous albums a lot of the songs blend into each other which’s completely not the case here. Each song is pretty different and I’m even a fan of the Green Day inspired No More Guns.

One thing that I think is disappointing is how the visuals for this album aren’t on that same grand scale. I guess their don’t have that money stream for music videos anymore. I think Loosing My Mind had the best concept.

 

Interesting that a few people have compared the quality of this to DED. In my opinion this album blows Neighborhoods and DED out of the water. Dogs was definitely a step in the right direction, but just like Neighborhoods and all of AVA’s prior albums, it really suffered from being self produced. When I Was Young and Disaster are good songs that would’ve been great if there was another voice in the room telling them to shorten those unnecessary intros, and to actually add substance to the bridges.

I’m so happy to have another fun Tom record. Bringing in Illan and Matt as co writers and Aaron as a co producer really breathed new life into this band. Crazy that the best AVA album came 15 years into their career! So pumped for this tour now!

 

The two things I appreciate most about this album is the experimentation and that it’s a fairly upbeat album.

I really like the production on this too, but still gotta hand that category to the Love albums. Production on those albums are so timeless.

 

Timeless in that it always sounds like shit

 

Agreed completely. For me this is the best Tom album overall in a very long time, and a lot of that imo can be chalked up to Ilan, Aaron and Matt’s influence.

 

Euphoria on the new angels and airwaves is just tom making a rush song and I love it (also I can’t believe I’m listening to AVA album in 2021 but I vibe)

 

It’s a fine album. It’s a great AVA album though.

 

yup that's what I'm taking away

 

Agreed. Enjoyed my listen but nothing blew me away. Losing my Mind is still probably my favorite of the bunch. Best tom stuff since neighborhoods, but nothing reached the highs of something like After Midnight for me. Which is fine!
Certainly the first Ava album I’ve listened to more than once since I-Empire. So that’s a thing, haha

 

I personally really like the Love albums. There’s something about them that hits for me and I’ve never really been able to figure it out. Lifeforms is all I’ve been listening to for last day and a half. I put it on in the car today and my fiancé said “this sounds like a DJ mashed up a blink-182 song.” Then she saw it was Angels & Airwaves and goes “oh it’s Tom Delonge. That explains it.” She did mention Depeche Mode while listening so I think Tom hit the nail on the head with that influence.

 

If you took the best of both LOVE albums it would be easily their best album imo, a lot of their strongest material is on those two albums. Part 1 is still up there in the top three for me (although this one might edge it out)

 

No way. Anxiety, Epic Holiday, and Hallucinations are fine, but from what I remember, the rest of those two albums are boooring. And even if it was an EP of just those 3 songs, it would still be in the lower half of their discography if I were to rank it haha.

 

Ill say Lifeforms is the best as whole honestly,since every track is so unique and I just looove the whole vibe….but Adventure,War,It Hurts,Call To Arms and Everything’s Magic will be always “THAT” AvA songs for me….I don’t really loved anything after I-Empire until this new absolute fire album

 

Sirens is still my favorite AVA song.

 

Thanks for sharing. This was a really dope interview I thought. Some good questions from the interviewer.

I love Tom being Tom. Possibly the least serious he has been during an AVA roll out.

This also explained why the album took so long, some weeks he only worked on this for a few hours a week due to other commitments ha.

 

Commitments he can’t really talk about right now.

 

The whole Love project was trash in my opinion. There’s maybe a song or two that is ok. But it was rushed and that’s when I realized Tom was rewriting the same thing over and over and over again.

 

Time will tell if I prefer The Dream Walker or this one but I'm glad to finally like another AVA album. In the lead up to this one, I made my way through their pre-The Dream Walker stuff for the first time in its entirety and was left mainly... bored. I couldn't get over the songwriting tricks that had irked me about Tom for a long time, up until he met Ilan and started changing it up.

Overall, this is really a solid rock album that's diverse enough to keep me engaged and, due to Tom's long history, also makes me nostalgic through a few throwback sounds. For example, Automatic sounds like a direct continuation of Neighborhoods and its following EP. Out of the unheard songs, I love Spellbound the most. Losing My Mind is probably my second favorite, as something about it reminds me of Bloc Party's more electronic moments. In both cases, I'm itching to hear more of that synth-y centric sound mixed with Tom's voice. It even makes me imagine what a collab with CHVRCHES would result in.

These last few releases seem to confirm Tom is at his best when he steps outside the box and works with people that help him do so.

 

Initially I thought Kiss & Tell was going to be a bad way to end the album but I actually really dig all the instruments fading to Tom's ending line "If I don't let her go".

 

I think I need to pick this up on vinyl.

 

The sound suits him. If only he had ever been in a band with a big Cure fan that could've gone further in on that sound!