With two successful albums under their belts, it’s safe to say that Angels & Airwaves have established themselves as more than a Blink-182 side project, but there’s no avoiding the comparisons once frontman Tom DeLonge opens his mouth on tape. His AVA delivery sounds like that of a class-clown jokester who’s realized that everyone’s laughing at him and not with him, and is trying his damnedest to put forth some substance of heart before we collectively pull the shades of giving a damn. It’s worked, to a degree, but as Blink’s recent reunion will confirm, the douchey prankster role is much more lucrative.

Of Love, DeLonge said, “It is the biggest release of my life, the pinnacle of my creativity. It’s super conceptual and highbrow in many ways, very artistic, very Stanley Kubrick, but it’s not a rock opera. It’s a very modern version of what could happen when you blend the film industry and the music industry together in a very, very arty, kind of cool way with professionals involved all along the path.”

Yeah, that’s a self-fellating load of horseshit, and those kinds of descriptions are usually used for overproduced, self-important mediocrity. Thankfully, the album is better than that. A little bit, anyway. But all the same, such hyperbolic back-patting of self fully entitles those tasked with reviewing the album to not mince words.

After a two and a half minute instrumental intro that sounds like U2’s The Edge orbiting the moon, Love kicks into gear with Flight Of The Apollo, a powerful dose of “you can get through this” with slight Box Car Racer influences and symphonic synths battling for airtime with the sounds of spaceships taking off.

Young London begins with a rising, envigorating sound that would be so much better if Tom screamed “You’ve been…THUNDAASTRUUUUCK!” where it was due. The intro is awesome, but the AC/DC ripoff is loud and clear. Unfortunately, the song stalls in second gear and never goes anywhere. The best part is the final minute or so, where the drums play a steady beat and the guitar chimes around with harmonics and echoes. In other words, not the song at all.

Largely, that’s the problem with the entire album. The guys seem to have gotten very excited about some riffs and the new spaceship sounds bank they found in Pro Tools, and built an album around a higher concept (love, of course) that everyone could universally relate to. An overdose of interludes and lengthy, melodramatic intros will keep most of this off the radio stations, but I suppose there’s something to be said for the fact that the album was made entirely independently.

Shove is a solid example of AVA’s attempts to break from their own formula, as single-worthy as Hallucinations, which is possibly the best song on the album. Mark Hoppus’ remix of the track, available with a donation to the band, is a noisy abomination that just makes no sense. The Moon-Atomic (Fragments And Fictions) is another strong contender, DeLonge singing “We are all that we are / So terribly sorry,” a sarcastic, anthemic anti-war pop-rock equivalent of Pearl Jam’s Insignificance. There’s a distinct Depeche Mode element to the outro, which stands unnecessarily alone but wins the track points in hindsight.

By contrast, Epic Holiday is rife with weak, cheesy lyrics and a guitar riff that’s pulled directly from Everything’s Magic from 2007’s I-Empire, which would never have existed without U2’s guitarist doing it first. And is it me, or is Mr. DeLonge recycling melodies from AVA’s previous two records?

If the band had a different singer, perhaps someone who could actually sing with range instead of the exact same inflections from song to song, they would stand a much greater chance of winning fans over organically. It’s to the point where we’re thankful for the odd “Yeeaah-Oooh”‘ action in Soul Survivor, simply because it’s different. I found myself appreciating the hell out of the jittery, minimal minute-plus intro to Some Origins Of Fire, but once the actual song kicked in the formula took over and my ears longed for something else.

For all their declarations that this is the pinnacle of their work as a band, this is what they want to be remembered for, it could be so much better with a little less effort to capture the dreamy space romance in a bottle and a little more energy put into sound variation. This is not the sound of falling in love, this is the sound of a band planning for years and doing their very best to be your Valentine’s Day soundtrack with slick, warm production and spaceship sounds.

The band’s certainly not going to win many new fans with this album, though an exception might be made for the latter-day Muse / 30 Seconds To Mars crossover audience. It’s a good album if you’re looking to get innocently romantic while driving fast, but it’s far from a masterpiece.

Angels & Airwaves’ Love can be streamed on their MySpace and downloaded off Fuel.tv now.

Modlife was launched back in November 2007 by Tom DeLonge, with Angels & Airwaves. The launch coincided with the release of the band’s second album, I-Empire. It was unlike anything any band had done before: For $6.95 a month you had access to exclusive blogs, videos, “Modcasts” (podcasts), live chats and live webcam broadcasts by the band members themselves. Along with those benefits was exclusive meet-&-greets with the band, available to members only. There was a noticeable spike in membership when this was announced publicly.

The period from November 2007 through the summer of 2008, the Angels & Airwaves members were pretty active. They kept up on blogging and chatting live. They each released one of their own Modcasts periodically that were available for download. And if you were lucky enough to be online at the same time, they would surprise you on the live Modcam. They usually had something new to say about the band and what was going on. Or it was Tom DeLonge dancing in his hotel room… in his underwear. Either way, it was entertaining and worth the $6.95 a month.

By far the coolest thing Angels & Airwaves achieved on Modlife was live streamed performances. They first set up the cameras in their practice room and performed a few songs, not without some technical difficulties, but it was as new to them as it was to anyone watching. A few months later they streamed one of their live shows without a hitch. It was my first experience with a live streamed show, and surprisingly I got a rush out of it like I was actually there. I’m not saying I’d replace the true live experience with it, but it was pretty damn cool.

Everyone a part of the Angels & Airwaves Modlife watched it develop new features over time. Tom DeLonge mentioned that other bands would soon be joining Modlife. He said that these won’t just be small new bands, but bands you’ve known for a long time. The first major band to join, and the biggest surprise, was Korn.

Many artists have joined Modlife since January 2009:

Angels And Airwaves
Attack Attack
Blink-182
Closure In Moscow
Envy On The Coast
Finch
Forever The Sickest Kids
From First To Last
From Jupiter
Hit The Lights
Honor Bright
Jessica Chobot
Keep A Breast
Korn
Louis XIV
Mayday Parade
Moon Rising
Run Doris Run
Runner Runner
Scary Kids Scaring Kids
The Color Fred
The Silent Comedy
Timmy Curran
Transfer

And now this leads me to an e-mail I received from Jack White’s Third Man Records, with their Declaration of Principles, which led to a full explanation of what exactly “The Vault” is:

I wondered what this new site could possibly look like; full of live video streams, videos and photos, live chats, and podcasts. So color me fucking flabbergasted when I click the link from Third Man Records’ announcement, and it leads me to a Third Man Records Modlife page! Complete with a new blog from Jack White himself, which I think MUST be a first. I can’t remember ever reading a blog by the man himself before.

It only makes perfect sense!  Jack White has taken the original concept of Modlife, originally presented by Tom DeLonge, and given it five shots of adrenaline.

What is amazing to me is the setup of the Third Man Records Modlife page. On the original Modlife network there was a drop-down on the top that says “Select a Site,” which dropped down a list of all the Modlife bands. If you are on The Vault’s Modlife page, on the “Select a Site” drop-down is The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, The White Stripes, and Third Man Records. If you are on any other Modlife site the drop-down lists every band, but not The Vault or any of Jack White’s bands. It seems Jack White pulled some strings and has made Third Man Records completely independent of the rest of the Modlife network.

When you sign up for The Vault you get not only the content of this Modlife page, but there is some merchandise in the package as well. As explained on The Vault announcement (a recommended read):

I immediately signed up for a Platinum membership, because if there’s anyone’s word you can trust in the music world right now, it’s Jack White’s (not this guy’s). When Tom DeLonge first launched Modlife it was full of bugs and issues. It took nearly a full year until it exploded with new features and new bands. But in the end the venture was totally worth it all.

I predict it will be a slow start for The Vault. These guys have been playing music all their lives, not tinkering with computers. But if we stick around long enough we will see it develop into something greater than what it already is.

Whether Jack White took a page out of Tom DeLonge’s book, or they were on the same page already, we can rest assured that there are major talents fighting on our side.

(To address your issue, sir, this is not just structured daily studio updates. If you do the math: for nearly the same price a week you get SO much more in this deal then some guy flexing his ego at you for 12 weeks. Besides, he said “any band”, and Third Man Recrords is not “any band.”)

“It’s like blending Radiohead and U2 together with these kind of Pink Floyd movements,” he explains. “Things happen unpredictably and take you to these epic soundscapes. It’s very much in the spirit of Angels & Airwaves, but it sounds way, way more thought-out and way more ambitious.” Yawn. This is beginning to read like a press release – the kind that fill industry inboxes every day, but rarely deliver any actual listenability.

DeLonge says Love is “the biggest release of my life, the pinnacle of my creativity… It’s super conceptual and highbrow in many ways, very artistic, very Stanley Kubrick.” Kubrick! “But it’s not a rock opera,” he explains. “It’s a very modern version of what could happen when you blend the film industry and the music industry together in a very, very arty, kind of cool way with professionals involved all along the path.”

Those are some big promises for the man Ashton Kutcher designed his entire personality around. The movie in question began life as a documentary about the making of Angels & Airwaves’ last album, but took on new life from there.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the music (I think), but the guy really seems to be aging strangely… he’s got that wounded look in his eyes that says he’s seen one too many horrible acid/shroom trips. Or did he just pull out all his eyelashes? I can’t tell.

Keep an eye out for the Angels & Airwaves Start The Machine DVD documentary, which came out Wednesday and documents the making of We Don’t Need To Whisper.

Shortly after, Kweli CC’d us on an email to his people, clarifying: “I know who Tom is. We did a song, it was dope. I don’t know who these so called lawyers and publicist are. Yo, everybody, y’all gotta get the word out better.”

They replied: “[Tom] knows, and the person listed that is supposed to be repping you doesn’t exist.”

So there you have it.