Listening to an Angels & Airwaves record requires a certain ability to suspend disbelief. Not an “I’m going to pretend there aren’t plot holes so I can like this movie” sort of suspension, but a willingness to buy an idiosyncratic, possibly-brilliant-but-probably-juvenile idea. Because that’s really what this band is about, as ridiculous as it sounds: the idea of hope, nebulously expressed in soundscapes that conjure visuals of the cosmos’ outer reaches. If you don’t accept the premise, the record is like endlessly orbiting a gaseous alien planet—impressive, but it looks exactly the same from every angle and leaves the overall impression of a shapeless, colossal whole. But if you’re willing to endure the cloudy, blustery atmosphere for a while, outlines of life begin to appear.

Angels & Airwaves
I-Empire
Rating: 6.7/10
Geffen Records, 2007

I-Empire is, almost to the dots and crosses, a remake of We Don’t Need to Whisper—a huge, plodding rumination on outer space where mentions of belief, existential screams, glances, hopes, fears, bombs, heartbeats, and the like are as numerous and omnipresent as are stars in the Milky Way. On first listen it cares little for the individual identities of its songs (despite their scrupulously formulaic structures), no equal to “The Adventure” or “The War” in sight. By the third listen, opener “Call to Arms” emerges from the mist as the leader of the pack: it takes nearly a minute to “wake up,” but there’s a lot more than typical Angels & Airwaves going on here. Marching-band drumming, subtly elevating strings, and a furious—and irresistible—upper-register electric guitar riff lead into DeLonge’s soaring, anthemic proclamations. In that track, and the somewhat less colorful lead single “Everything’s Magic,” an unexpected development emerges: drummer Atom Willard, stolen from the Offspring, has given A&A’s percussion a thrashing facelift.

“Breathe,” is the first downer, a melodic, bloated waste of time for which “did you know that I love you?” serves as the hook. In addition to the infraction of cloning itself from better songs on Empire, “Sirens” is one of the unfortunate moments that triggers a snap from the pseudo-prog trance into the earthly reality that Tom DeLonge always has and always will sound like a petulant teenager, and his ongoing love affair with overwrought metaphors (“the earth is like a night fire”) and juvenile vocalizations (“la dada dadada”) isn’t exactly helping with the damage control. Another shockingly puerile Blink flashback is “Rite of Spring,” which makes painfully literal references to the singer’s “skateboard and shit guitar,” his father’s queries about his grades, and his “fucked up family.”

When their fearless leader is not wishing he were still eighteen and screaming out catchy love/hate songs, Angels & Airwaves have a few more average rock songs to add to their repertoire. “Love Like Rockets,” with its thumping bass/percussion marriage (and its willingness to put meaty rock in front of atmospherics) finally breaks the monotony of the overused sweeping-midtempo-arc template. Even so, it borrows from previous material: the intros and outros overlay slamming percussion with plunking electronic glockenspiel, more than a little like “Start the Machine.” “Secret Crowds,” the hardest rocker on the record (and indisputably “The War, Part II”), fails to either offend or excite.

Because they make up the time travel between these tepid moments, the two interludes (“Star of Bethlehem” and “Jumping Rooftops”) seem more bland and pointless than scene-setting (as the expansive intros and outros felt on We Don’t Need to Whisper). But the former leads into one of Empire‘s more satisfying tracks,—the towering “True Love”—an undeniable reach for U2 stature. Whatever he’s saying the “stars in the sky” illuminate, the gripping, frenetic strumming and ascending chord progression make sure we are too occupied to notice. Then—as if to make sure we remember that any compliments of this album must be hastily qualified—“Heaven” wraps up the interplanetary excursion with some epic, rom-com-soundtrack silliness (“please stay/don’t go/I’ve got you now”). (A live version of “It Hurts” actually closes the record, and it’s possibly the best recorded track the band has released).

It’s difficult to say exactly how this record would sound if Whisper didn’t exist. But alas it does, and the highest compliment I-Empire deserves is that it successfully toned down the indulgent, exhausting bluster of its predecessor in favor of more intricate instrumentation and more balanced production. But on the converse, the mechanical tightenings have sapped Angels & Airwaves of much of its initial enchantment. Whisper might have been bloated and boring, but it held a degree of novelty and DeLonge believed in it so much that he sold even the lowlights. He has less to prove on this record, evidence that fading belief may be fatal for a band that derives its existence from the recollection of an epiphany.