Blink-182
Quarantine
Columbia
We should expect a suffocating slew of pandemic-inspired art so songs like Blink-182’s Quarantine feel like just the beginning. Released last week via Columbia Records, Quarantine is their first new music since last year’s album NINE and is set to be the lead single from an upcoming EP set to feature the varied talents of Lil Uzi Vert and Pharrell Williams.
It’s an angrier song than those classic Blink-182 cuts filled with toilet humour and adolescence pains (this is the band who wrote and released When You Fucked Grandpa) but, arguably, everything has to be political in this fraught current moment (we’ve seen similarly ageing musicians like Bon Jovi considering the political in the past weeks).
Since it’s Blink-182, the song rushes by at a blistering pace. The pop-punk pioneers abandon the wit and buoyancy of that genre for a straighter hard punk riff. The overall impression is of a Black Flag track with lyrics by a whiny high school theatre kid; the chorus, for instance, contains the easily-remembered but blandly-written “Quarantine, fuck this disease… Quarantine, no, not for me”.
The lyrics were actually written by bassist Mark Hoppus and the only saving grace is the sardonic encapsulation of the national hysteria that surrounded the outbreak when he sings, “It’ll disappear in April, just like a miracle/ We don’t need social distance, we don’t need old people”. With no tracklist or official date for the new EP yet, it remains unclear whether the rest of the songs will follow in Quarantine’s path or not.
CONOR LOCHRIE
