Last week, after months of teasing, Blink-182 released the first single from California, the band’s Tom Delonge-less new record. Produced and co-written by John Feldmann—the Goldfinger member turned hitmaker for bands like 5 Seconds Of Summer—“Bored To Death” sounds like a song built for radio play. It’s got a massive chorus, slick production, and Blink’s newest member Matt Skiba sounding so much like Mark Hoppus it’s hard to tell the two apart. In other words, it’s an actual song. The same cannot be said for the second California track, “Built This Pool.”
In its 15-second runtime, “Built This Pool” features the following lyrics and nothing more: “I wanna see some naked dudes / That’s why I built this pool.” It shows why Delonge maybe wasn’t that jazzed on being in Blink-182 anymore, as he’s allegedly cooperating with the Department Of Defense in order to expose long-held secrets about alien life forms while his former bandmates are gawking at dongs. Though—now that we think about it—are those two things really that different?