REVIEW: Angels and Airwaves- Love

Angels and Airwaves - Love

I think what I dislike most about 'Love' is that I actually kind of like it.

So this is AvA's third album and is available for free download through the band's Modlife page. I had bought their first album 'We Dont Need To Whisper' some years ago, on the strength of debut single 'The Adventure' and the words of Tom DeLonge, who stopped just short of announcing AvA to be the greatest occurance in musical history.

Tom is, of course, one third of Blink 182, undoubtedly one of the best songwriting pop-punk bands around. And in the aforementioned first release, and second offering 'I-Empire' there was always a hint that AvA were capable of writing some excellent songs (see The Adventure, Everything's Magic, Call To Arms). However, these were losts in what were, to be honest, two fairly low quality albums. AvA too often fell into the trap of trying to sound too epic; over complicating the harmonies and stretching out the often tedious electronic introductions.

Album number three falls into a similar trap. After a predictable instrumental introduction, Tom and co burst into one of the better songs on the album. 'The Flight of Apollo' has a jagged riff, and some decent vocal melodies.
'Young London' continues promisingly, containing a catchy chorus, and a pounding drum beat. After that it takes a dip, after an unecessarily long outro come 'Shove' and 'Epic Holiday', two songs that would have probably lasted about two Blink 182 jams before being discarded in favour of something remotely interesting.
The lead single, 'Hallucinations' is much better, but sounds very much like something else I cant quite put my singer on; likely something in Blink's impressive back catalogue. The rest of the album passes without making much of an impression, save 'Letters to God, Part II' which, while being another standout track, sounds very similar to 'Young London'.

I cant help but feel that the reunion of Blink 182 might go some way to answering why quite a large quantity of this album feels like hastily-put-together filler. DeLonge clearly still has a deft hand at creating catchy, electronically-fuelled rock songs, and this album is a long way away from being awful, but it stills leaves me with exactly the same feelings about AvA's position in the musical stratosphere: mediocrity.

High Points: 'Young London', the chorus of 'Hallucinations', it's free to download!

Low Points: the lyrics in general, 'Epic Holiday', and the likelyhood that the writing of this album stole Tom away from valuable Blink182 time.

6.5 out of 10.