Description

2001s Take Off Your Pants And Jacket is Blink 182s fourth full-length and follow-up to the bands breakthrough 1999 album Enema of the State. Produced by Jerry Finn, the sprawling set debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 thanks to the hit singles First Date, The Rock Show, and Stay Together for the Kids, selling in excess of 14 million copies in the process.

Vocalist/bassist Mark Hoppus on the album: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket was the next step for Blink-182. Theres songs on this record that sound like they come off of older records, like Cheshire Cat, songs that sound like they come off of Dude Ranch, songs that sound like they might come off of Enema of the State, and songs that are the next step altogether. I think its a lot lighter scope than what people might expect from Blink-182. We have some real fast songs, some slower songs. Travis wanted to try some drum loops on this record. We tried different vocal effects, different arrangements, different rhythms. I think that this record will probably surprise some people.

Take Off Your Pants is Blink-182s fourth studio album, and like all the others, it improves on the last one. They dont mess around much outside their tessitura they like to keep everything light, fast and punchy. Even before the vocals, you can always tell its Blink-182 and not, say, Green Day or the Offspring or Foo Fighters, all of whom sound sluggish in comparison.

Their understandably underhyped musical chops are one of the reasons Blink ride high where so many similar guitar bands have fizzled. But another is that theyre rock & roll boys who arent scared to sing to, for and about rock & roll girlsThey bare their painfully adolescent fragility, confusion and vulnerability, without playing coy about their pathetic sex drives or their moronic sense of humor. Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone