Album Review: Angels & Airwaves - The Dream Walker

26 November 2014 | 2:48 pm | Daniel Cribb

"AVA have truly found their groove."

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The epic and diverse project that is Tom Delonge’s (Blink-182) Angels & Airwaves has offered up another smorgasbord of multimedia with their fifth record, The Dream Walker, its music only scratching the surface of its depth.

Much like Love (2010) and Love: Part Two (2011), the new record supports a wealth of other releases. Playing soundtrack to the Toronto Film Festival Award-winning animated film, Poet: The Dream Walker, it also gives way to a supporting comic book, follow-up novel and feature film. That’s a lot for ten songs to hold up but if any album could, this is the one.

Where Delonge has penned the band’s previous four records largely by himself, The Dream Walker sees collaboration with drummer/multi-instrumentalist Ilan Rubin, who had previous stints with the likes of Nine Inch Nails and more. Rubin’s style bleeds in and out of focus and, in tracks like Bullets In The Wind, gives them a revitalised sound. There are no epic five-minute intros or interludes; instead the album’s ten tracks are built on more conventional song structures, leaving melody and lyrics to pull the weight, which is what Delonge was born to write.

There’s diversity throughout, with Kiss With A Spell experimenting more with an electronic sound, and album closer, Anomaly, introducing the band’s first acoustic track. At album number five, AVA have truly found their groove and produced their most fluid and down-to-earth release to date.

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