MUSIC

Blink-182 enters a fresh stage

Band reflects on masterwork album’s 10th year

Left to right, Travis Barker, Tom DeLonge, and Mark Hoppus of Blink-182.

LOS ANGELES — For airplane-phobic drummer Travis Barker, the gig required a quick trip across town in a pimped-out low rider. Singer-bassist Mark Hoppus flew 5,400 miles from London. And with sky’s-the-limit rock-star gusto, guitarist-vocalist Tom DeLonge bypassed traffic on the 405 and helicoptered in from San Diego.

With the sun high in the autumn sky, Blink-182 arrived at the Hollywood Palladium to find a punk-rock centipede, a line of heavily tattooed, extravagantly pierced, and Mohawk-sporting fans waiting for the sold-out show.

The scene made Hoppus uncharacteristically wistful. “I was that dude!” he said. “I saw so many Palladium shows.”

With two back-to-back Palladium performances selling out in 36 seconds (and three other quickly scheduled dates at L.A.’s Wiltern Theater sold out as well), Blink-182’s pop-punk cultural output is still defined by arrested adolescence.

Blink rose from San Diego’s suburban torpor to become perhaps the least likely alterna-rock band to conquer mainstream radio. But that band of bros singing about burritos, prank calls, and alien abduction who never met a penis joke they didn’t love? They lost that snot-nose spirit long ago.

Consider that Barker nearly died in a fiery 2008 private-jet crash that claimed the lives of four other people onboard. DeLonge battled back from skin cancer in 2010. And nearly three years ago, Hoppus moved to Europe.

For its November shows, the band turned away from its earliest material and spotlighted its underrated masterwork: the 2003 untitled album commonly known as “Blink-182.” The plan was to play it front-to-back for the first time at the Palladium, including six songs Blink had never performed live before an audience.

“That’s by far my favorite album we did,” said Barker, taking a break from pounding his practice pads in an upstairs dressing room. “It was groundbreaking for us.”

Upon its release a decade ago this week, the self-titled CD arrived as a great leap forward for Blink. It drew in post-hard-core rock influences from DeLonge and Barker’s critically hailed side band Boxcar Racer, and ultimately divided fans and startled critics. While selling more than 2.2 million copies and spawning a No.1 hit (on the Billboard alternative chart) with the melancholy power ballad “I Miss You,” the album opened inter-personal fissures in the band and contributed to a hiatus that lasted from 2005 to 2008.

Intended as their boys-to-men moment, the self-titled CD provided a turning point for the group by dint of its experimental instrumentation, darker lyrics, and total absence of toilet humor.

After leaving longtime home Interscope Records, Blink is in talks for a new deal. It expects to record new material within the next 90 days. Nostalgia surrounding the 10th anniversary of “Blink-182” notwithstanding, the idea is to channel the 2003 mojo into the new material.