Plenty of ink has been spilled over Tom DeLonge in the last few months. The vast majority of it concerned his he said-she said split from Blink-182, the pop-punk band that made him a star without tying down a restless mind. More recently, though, interest has grown in ‘To The Stars’, a collection of odds and ends given added weight as his first post-Blink musical statement.
In the last 15 years, the guitarist has dabbled with Box Car Racer and Angels and Airwaves, comic books, novels and his clothing lines. From its beginnings in three minutes songs about dicks, his discography now has a scattergun look to it. That’s reflected on ‘To The Stars’.
The eight cuts here are stitched together from all points on DeLonge's varied slate of influences. The Landscapes instrumental and the execrable Animals run closest to AVA’s synth-rock concoction, while an acoustic cut, The Invisible Parade, is counterbalanced by Circle-Jerk-Pit, which looks like a prime Blink secret track candidate on paper but is, in fact, a very close friend of Box Car Racer’s My First Punk Song. New World would also look at home on that self-titled record.
The songs that will carry most weight are the ones that appear to be Blink cast-offs: An Endless Summer, with its riff and verse plainly recalling the ‘Take Off Your Pants and Jacket’ era, and Golden Showers In The Golden State. As its title might suggest, it’s very Blink indeed, from a guitar line that nods to First Date to its lyric sheet: “Your mom can touch my dick every single fucking day.”
Quality-wise, it’s a real mixed bag. An Endless Summer and New World are actually pretty great, but the vast majority of ‘To The Stars’ sounds like what it is: a bunch of songs that were never intended to sit together being forcibly introduced to one another.
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