+44
When Your Heart Stops Beating

THE REVIEW

Foreword: as my debut work for DeBaser, I have chosen a mediocre album solely because my favorite albums have already been reviewed much better than I believe I could do myself.

That said, let's get to us, or rather, to them: following the breakup of Blink-182, bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker founded +44, a band that initially featured Carol Heller and, after her departure, saw Craig Fairbaugh on rhythm guitar and Shane Gallagher on lead guitar.

When Your Heart Stops Beating, which is also the group's first and so far only album, features songs from both the post-Carol Heller period and the previous period.

Given the presence of the two former Blink one would logically expect yet another plastic album, filled with anthems to adolescent stupidity and a massive dose of cliché of the same kind: big mistake (okay, maybe not that big). This album, while belonging to a bland genre like pop-punk, is quite positive primarily thanks to a surprising maturity (both stylistically and, at least in part, in terms of content), the addition of a guitarist compared to the Blink setup and the presence of Barker who, while certainly not the best drummer in the world as many say, has an undeniable merit: he plays damn fast, thus giving the band's sound all the grit they need, although perhaps he is somewhat limited in some tracks.

Moving on to the tracklist, in my opinion, noteworthy are the opening song "Lycanthrope," perhaps the most punk track of the entire album, the title track "When Your Heart Stops Beating" and "155," both brimming with energy and grit, the sugary yet very pleasant "Make You Smile," and finally "No, It Isn’t," a melancholic and angry outburst from Mark Hoppus towards Tom DeLonge, guilty of leaving the band without a concrete reason.

In conclusion, I would classify When Your Heart Stops Beating as a good album of a poor and perhaps useless genre, a work that deserves recognition for a certain maturity that makes it potentially enjoyable even for those over 18, a characteristic not found within the work of Blink-182.