We Don't Need to Whisper

1	Valkyrie Missile 6:39
2	Distraction 5:36
3	Do It for Me Now 4:33
4	The Adventure 5:12
5	A Little's Enough 4:45
6	The War 5:07
7	The Gift 5:02
8	It Hurts 4:14
9	Good Day 4:30
10	Start the Machine 4:10

Barnes & Noble

While it's true that everyone needs to grow up sometime, it's not a very popular notion in the realms of punk, where most folks do their best to follow a Peter Pan-like path to eternal youth. With this new combo, former Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge boldly steps into adulthood, jettisoning both the pull-my-finger humor and three-chord bashes that won him fans the world over for more than a decade. Far more ambitious than Blink, Angels and Airwaves aspire to generate big ideas -- which works out a fair amount of the time -- and an even bigger sound, which connects virtually all the time. We Don't Need to Whisper is something of a concept album, a spiritual quest wrapped up in tales of earthly war and otherworldly visitors. Kicking off with the U2-gone-prog anthem "Valkyrie Missile" -- which layers keyboards, guitars, and spacey effects in a (surprisingly successful) attempt to capture the tension of life during wartime -- the disc snakes inexorably through dark thickets, dragging the faithful along for a bracing ride. DeLonge also ventures into spiritual territory, most notably on the spacious "A Little Is Enough," on which the singer has said he wanted to tell the tale in which "God comes down and fixes the world in a day." We Don't Need to Whisper isn't entirely given over to such headiness, though. DeLonge proves himself capable not only of wearing his heart on his sleeve -- as opposed to wiping his nose on it -- but also of making a listener care about his sob stories. That's particularly true on sweeping love paeans like "It Hurts," which swells with guitars (both DeLonge's and those of his onetime Boxcar Racer comrade David Kennedy) as well as mounting romantic angst. This new "mature" sound is sure to cause a bit of consternation among some Blink fans, but We Don't Need to Whisper is, by and large, something worth shouting about. David Sprague

All Music Guide

How do you know that former blink-182 leader Tom DeLonge intends for his post-blink project Angels and Airwaves to be taken seriously? Because throughout their debut album, We Don't Need to Whisper, he relies on sounds and textures borrowed from 1988, the era when college rock was filled with atmospheric sonics and earnest politics. Specifically, he layers delayed guitars ripped from U2 over soundscapes equally inspired by the Cure, New Order, Peter Gabriel, and The Unforgettable Fire, all in an attempt to fashion a modern-day protest record. The result might be less than successful, but it is interesting, particularly in how DeLonge's desire to be taken seriously has led him to use the serious music of his adolescence as a signifier that he's serious now. Stephen Thomas Erlewine