Arriving five years after their last album, Neighbourhoods, Blink-182’s seventh record has endured a development process as painful as the enemas the band used to gleefully reference in their late-90s heyday. Last year members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker legally separated from guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge due to his unwillingness to record it, replacing him with Alkaline Trio vocalist Matt Skiba. The album’s promotional build-up, meanwhile, has been overshadowed by claims from DeLonge that he’s working with the US government on investigating UFOs. Perhaps understandably, California bears the scars of that difficult gestation. At 16 tracks, it feels bloated and unfocused, tonally offering up an uneasy mix of cheery pop-punk (Kings of the Weekend) and moody, goth-tinged alt-rock (Los Angeles). There are a few spirited attempts to summon the adolescent irreverence of old, but generally this is a tired – and tiring – work. Perhaps the presence of DeLonge and his tales of alien invasion might have livened things up a bit.
