Fittingly on the day that the current mother of all reunions has been announced, Ireland’s old boy summer is drawing to a close as yet another reformed / heritage / doing it for the money act rolls into view. Blink-182 certainly tick all of those boxes, this being the return of the original line-up after approaching a decade of non-communication in support of new album ONE MORE TIME. Throw in Mark Hoppus’ cancer diagnosis and Travis Barker’s family issues (causing the cancellation of an original 3Arena date at the end of last year) and it’s hard not to approach this endeavour with a warmer attitude than maybe others. And we’re clearly not alone, with the album doing good business and this gig upgrading to an evening in the RHK grounds.
Those touches that can make the trio such an engaging listen are evident from the off on the twisting basslines and counter harmony vocals of ‘Feeling It’; followed by the ‘other’ type of Blink-182 song – the furious sing-a-long of ‘The Rock Show’. In truth, a little of this stuff goes a long way and the night has a tendency to blur into a mass of one dimensional pop punk. ONE MORE TIME being billed as a ‘return to their roots’ effectively means more of the same and there is a sense that the band are early-twenty-somethings trapped in middle-aged, old bodies.Their schoolboy humour was a bit tiresome at the time but to hear two fifty year old men joking about their elderly mothers sexual organs isn’t the most enjoyable of experiences.
When the band cast aside their SoCal template they were capable of digging a lot deeper. The theory that grunge stemmed from a generation of young men from broken homes brought on by increased divorce transfers to the punk scene. ‘‘Stay Together For The Kids’ addresses that very topic and provides a welcome change of pace. It ushers in the most interesting section of the night, featuring newie ‘CAN’T GO BACK’, dips into their side project past including a snippet of Box Car Racer, ‘Down’ (introduced by Tom DeLonge as “not a rebel song”) and undoubtedly the career highlight of ‘I Miss You’ – the drum intro for which sends the teenage girls on a nearby grilled cheese sandwich food stall running for their phones to film the action in the distance. They’re not wrong, it’s a stunning performance of an incredible song.
For the final run we’re firmly back in the ‘hey ho let’s go!’ camp and a greatest hits selection that proves they had it in them to be a fine pop band alongside the punk bit. There’s nothing here that feels like a chore or a going through the motions exercise and it’s pretty joyous to be a part of. Unlike the band stickers that adorn DeLonge’s guitar (Fugazi, The Jam, T.S.O.L.) Blink-182 didn’t set out to light a fire of cultural and political change and the lightness of their legacy perhaps makes nights like this more palatable.
Who would really deny them and the thousands here the chance to jump up and down to ‘All The Small Things’ one more (or in many cases, the first) time? On that note, they leave us with the title track from the new album – proof that they may have grown up after all. A tender re-telling of the band’s history and their reasons for getting back together (“I wish they told us it shouldn’t take a sickness or aeroplanes falling out the sky. Do I have to die to hear you miss me?”) it’s so at odds with the majority of what has come before that your head spins a little. Perhaps Blink-182 were fooling us all along.
