An Album a Day Keeps the Doctor Away #29: +44 - When Your Heart Stops Beating

Day 29. Couple days shy of a month. That’s wild. Shoutout to me for sticking with this. God knows how much longer I will. Today I listened to all of the almost-Blink-182 record, +44’s When Your Heart Stops Beating.

+44 // When Your Heart Stops Beating

It’s average. It’s really average. I’m not going to lie, I’ve never got the hype over the title track itself, which is most peoples' big draw for this album. It’s like a dancey goth Blink-182 track that’s weaker than everything off the self-titled Blink record. That being said, some of these deep cuts I've never heard are very good. In fact, most of the tracks I actually like on this album are the more melodic, less guitar heavy, slightly darker tracks. 

Like 155: a dancey number with a melancholic but not melancholic chorus. Dry your hollow eyes and let’s go down to the water is very kind of smooth in an I Miss You way, but then there’s please, let's not speak, don't breathe a word which immediately juxtaposes that darkness of the previous line with Mark’s tone and the atmospheric instrumental with the cymbal heavy dancey beat. Very nice. 

Also quite like Weatherman with its creeping pace, kinda thick bass tone, and actual dark lyrics and chorus. Weatherman is definitely more of a vibe than anything on this album and I think a lot of the bangers on here betray a lot of these darker and more melodic tracks, as the latter are actually the better tracks. If you’ve just heard the title track I get why you’d probs not wanna listen to this. But songs like Lillian, No, It Isn’t, Make You Smile (which is the most obviously Postal Service influenced track on this album, very nice, thank you) and the aforementioned tracks warrant listens as they also (for the most part) continue the darker themes from the self-titled Blink record.

Really, if we take this album, the Angels & Airwaves record I did here a hot minute ago, Box Car Racer, and smashed them all together, there’s a perfect follow up to self-titled Blink in there somewhere. I’m not having Neighbourhoods, and as much as I like California, it’s definitely a regression to the more straight-forward blink records. If Blink kept going along I Miss You, Stockholm Syndrome, Down, Always, All of This, I’m Lost Without You kinda lines (all of which you can see in these various post-breakup offshoots) they could’ve easily put out the most realised Blink album (and probably a hot contender for my favourite album) ever. Kinda sucks that never got to happen.