Angels And Airwaves: Spaced Out?

“I honestly think we are going to create world peace and I believe everyone is going to have one more baby because of this record. Even people who can’t have kids will have one baby because of us. That’s how fucking great it is!” Tom Delonge is certainly back, and by the sounds of things isn’t planning on keeping his feet on the ground. There’s excitement in his voice and the more he talks about his new ‘masterpiece’ its clear his grand predictions that embodied the release of Angels and Airwaves debut ‘We Don’t Need To Whisper’, have neither evaporated nor shrunk.

Delonge is a man on a mission and is using Angels and Airwaves as the vehicle in which to transport his ideology. He laments to Gigwise: “I do think as far as what is happening in music and what we have done previously in our careers, this is the best work we have ever done. Angels and Airwaves have absolutely the ability to compete with anyone.” Their ‘best work’ Delonge is beaming with pride about is ‘I Empire’, their second album in two years.

Everybody changes with time, a natural progression if you will. But there’s gradual change and then there’s a complete personality transplant. The Tom Delonge that helped drive Blink-182 to a world-conquering status was a carefree, immature skater-dude that spouted dick and fart joke at any given opportunity. There songs included ‘Fuck a Dog’ and ‘Dick Lips’. But then came the split nobody, including himself, had predicted nor prepared for. The band he had grown up with, the two best friends he shared everything with, disappeared in an instant. Delonge was understandably lost and despondent as he reveals: “I never saw the end of that band coming so when it did come it was a shock. I was sitting there when I didn’t want to play music and I was really depressed. So I said ok, how am I going to create a piece of music that makes me love music again, and make me feel the way I want to feel again.” This indicated a new direction and a visible growth in both Delonge’s music and his own personality. A fresh maturity was found “We came up with this sound. This very epic atmospheric music built on a crescendo and has a sonic lift. The lyrics are very optimistic and describe a world you want to be involved in. and that definitely had to come after something tragic in my artistic career” said Tom.

After the hype that surrounded Angels and Airwaves beginnings and the stark statements Delonge boldly spouted around the release of their debut LP, it is fair to say the impact was more of a whimper than a scene-smashing triumph. But Delonge is not about to back down, and certainly doesn’t show any sign of admitting he may have over sold himself. “When the last record came out and I said it was the best band in the world everyone gets so angry when you say that. Like ‘how could you be so fucking pompous! But music is totally subjective. Like how can you say one piece of art is better than another?  And that’s what I thought was so funny about it. Because people start arguing and get pissed that you say that, but I’m basically just going out there and saying red is the best colour and everyone says you can’t say reds the best colour, how dare you. And that’s what so funny about it all.”

Though with a little more probing Gigwise gets the nearest thing to a ‘maybe I was a bit over ambitious’ declaration from Delonge as he reluctantly admits: “I do think we will eventually be the biggest rock band, but it might take 20 years or 2 years or somewhere in between . I think two years is a tiny bit ambitious to say that. It is an on going work of art”

Although Delonge is deeply serious about his work and the avenue he is furiously carving out, there is glimpses of his old mischievous self, this is evident during his revelations of what Angels fans can expect at a gig, he declares: “I can pretty much guess that every single person in the audience will be crying or jumping up and down shitting their pants at the same time.” Delonge even prepared a theory to why this will happen, “We actually approach that by just having really low frequencies on our instruments which makes people do it physically.” Jokes Tom

The majority of those fans, who have been promised quite a show, are there because of Delonge and fundamentally because of his past. They were Blink-182 worshipers and will therefore support anything that one of their disciples dabbles in. But Delonge is fully aware of this and thus includes snippets of Blink songs and Box Car Racer’s ‘There Is’ into Angles and Airwaves live shows. He explains: “I knew that the kids were there at the early parts and so a way for me to tip the hat and make a nod to them, is to play a verse of a Blink song then I would lead into an Angel’s song. Except we played ‘There Is’ whole because it is just David and I and we were both in Box Car Racer together. I wouldn’t say we would never play blink songs in there entirety but it’s still to be determined.