Two Door Cinema Club Review

I first came across this band through my girlfriend who had downloaded the album and was constantly listening to one of the more well known songs off the album, What You Know. I enjoyed the song but I never thought about listening to the rest of the album despite the single being very upbeat and catchy and similar to the sort of the music that I am into.
The band were announced to play Reading 2011 and being as I was going on the day that they were playing I decided to give their debut album, Tourist History, a listen.
The first song on the album, Cigarettes in the Theatre starts off rather menacingly and suggests that this could have darker elements than What you Know suggested. However 30 seconds into it, the song burst into euphoric synth pop which is what I was anticipating when I first decided to listen to it. Despite this it did not disappoint in anyway and its good to hear an album that is uplifting and euphoric despite the hard times we live in at the moment. Certain parts of the album remind me of Bloc Party who excel in blending guitars with synths and while there are no sad or emotional numbers that make up some of Bloc Party's albums, its refreshing to hear a band who build on their influences instead of directly mimicking them.

Another strong point of the album is that the album tracks are worth listening to over and over again. While I'm the sort of music listener who will listen through the "bad" tracks of albums instead of skipping them, the album tracks are practically singles. In fact the whole album sounds like a greatest hits, instead of a debut album. One of the stand out tracks is Something Good Can Work which basically sounds like the definitive summer anthem, with a euphoric synth hook and jangly guitars, it is a thoroughly enjoyable song and should be an indie rock staple for years to come.
However the album is not exactly perfect. Because the songs are all upbeat, it can be a bit repetitive and there does not seem to be a lot of substance beneath the shiny synth pop surface. Also Alex Trimble does not sound a particularly unique front man, his vocals sound like every other indie rock singer out there. Its the riffs and the catchiness of the songs that are the stars of the show, not the singing or the lyrics.
Despite this you cannot deny that this is a very enjoyable album and if you are feeling down, then put this album on because I guarantee you it will put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. It is also somehow captures the feel and sound of an idyllic summer especially What You Know and Undercover Martyn and you can imagine these songs soundtracking your summer and many summers to come. All that I have left to say is, I should listen to my girlfriend more often when it comes to music!

Why Blink-182's new album "Neighborhoods" needs to be good.

Reading 2010. The final night of the festival. Blink-182 are on stage and are undeniably the band everyone has been waiting for the whole festival. Towards the beginning of their set they start playing Miss You. I don't know whether it was because they were a brilliant live band or it was because I was starting to sober up, (2 hours previously I was asleep/passed out on my friend's shoulder during Weezer's set....) but I found myself almost moved to tears. Granted it is one of the more emotional songs in the Blink canon but it is still a damn good song that pretty much everyone can relate to. From that moment on I went from being a casual listener to an enthusiastic fan as I found myself almost speechless after the set had finished. They were truly the perfect close to the festival after the Guns N' Roses/Axl Rose Show disaster that opened it. 4 months or so later when news of another UK tour in the summer of 2011 me and my friends seized the opportunity to go and see them again. There was even better news still to come when a new album was in the works and it was due for a summer release.
However.....
In April this year the music world was granted with this statement from Mark Hoppus: "It is with heavy hearts that we have to announce our planned 2011 European summer tour has been rescheduled. When we booked the tour last year, we were confident that we would have the new album out before the summer. Turns out we were mistaken as the album is taking longer than we thought and won't be out till later this year."

Admittedly I wasn't too bummed out about this. I couldn't get standing tickets and the only seats I could get was towards the top of the O2 Arena so I wasn't expecting the gig to be better than Reading's, being as I was quite near the front. But it was the one gig that the majority of my group of friends from home in Plymouth were going to so it would have been a lot of fun nonetheless. 
What was more annoying was the fact that not long after the band announced that they were due to start a tour in North America beginning in August. This pissed off a lot of people, my friends included, being as they disappointed their fans by making us wait a full year for £40 tickets we bought in November. Only to announce weeks later that they were going to play a big tour of America that was to start in August, not long after they would have played in Europe. They did offer refunds which I had no choice to accept due to having no money at that point but the majority of my friends are still planning to go and I hope they have a good time!  
Thankfully I still had the album to look forward to, which although they were pressured to finish it by Geffen Records by July 31, I still have high hopes that the album will deliver.
On July 14 the first single, "Up All Night" was released. When I first listened to it, it did not sound like a traditional Blink song, (although to be fair their previous album didn't have the traditional sound either) but I still enjoyed it. It took me a couple more listens to fully appreciate and I think its a worthy comeback song that dares to be different to what Blink have released previously. At the end of the day the three band members are approaching 40 so it was bound to have a different sound.
However the song got a fair amount of backlash. On NME.com people were saying: "Bloody Awful" and "Life long Blink fan, they are my childhood. This song is a disgrace." Hardly a unanimous "All the Small Things" type of praise.
But something about the new album that disappointed me recently (and prompted me to right this blog) was the fact that a couple of days ago, Blink 182 released the track listing for the new album. I was disappointed to discover that there was only going to be 10 songs on the album, and 3 songs on the "deluxe" edition. After all the hype of their comeback and their brilliant headline set at Reading, I was expecting a bit more than just 10 songs. Granted its not about the quantity,( Led Zeppelin are prime examples of having a small amount of track numbers and delivering an incredible amount of quality), but Blink are not known for long songs. Although in a recent interview with Jam Showbiz Tom DeLonge says that there are "prog-rock" songs on the album, so it will be interesting to see how the album turns out like.
What I'm trying to get at is this is probably Blink 182's most important album of their career, its their big comeback, if this is a disaster then they are going to be riding on nostalgia for the next decade or so. Lets be honest they're too young to be going on greatest hits nostalgia tours like The Rolling Stones or The Who, this album needs to be good. With their performance at Reading being one of my highlights of 2010, could their new album be one of my highlights of 2011? I'll have to wait until September 27 to find out.....