Blink-182 and Turnstile Score an Impressive Performance at Barclays Center

As I disembarked at the Barclays subway station, I could tell I was approaching the epicenter. The blocks around the Brooklyn arena were flooded with folks of all ages and backgrounds wearing Blink-182 merch of varying levels of crudeness. While it is generally considered taboo to wear a band’s merch to their own show, a Blink show seems to be a safe haven where everyone can wear their favorite of the band’s shirts, self identifying as part of their fandom. More people than you would think are Blink-182 (myself included, though that should be pretty obvious based on demographics alone); they’re a band that crossed over during the radio heyday and into common consciousness. The fact that Travis Barker has so many side projects and married into celebrity I’m sure helps, but their music became emblematic of an era, as well as a generation. Their songs are fun and sometimes - admittedly - dumb, but also open-hearted and empathetic, accepting the listener for who they were, and never accepting judgment. 

Turnstile, a band in whose pit I had almost died in while trying to take photos at a small Chicago club show (only a slight exaggeration), opened the show with a spirited performance. It’s been impressive to see their growth in the last few years, where they have gone from hardcore indie darlings to performing in arenas, crossing over with a sound that still has the aggressive propulsion of the school of hardcore they come from, but suffused with such melody and joy that they win over any crowd they performed for, including at Barclays.

Once Blink-182 started playing, the two things that surprised me were that 1) I did in fact know all of their songs, and 2) I did not find their performance nostalgic or stale at all. It felt alive and vital; the band was not phoning in at all, and their set was the work of seasoned professionals (even if their banter and video backdrops made that hard to believe) that were having a lot of fun and seemed very thankful to have so many people still excited to see their music.

I’m not sure what they expected. The harmonies of Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus were the sound of my generation's adolescence and early adulthood, and Blink-182 was the band that every cafeteria table was allowed to like. Jocks, metal heads, nerds, and even Christian kids snuck them onto their walkman. I take Blink-182 reuniting as a sign of cultural healing, and the fact that they are seemingly having so much fun is reassuring. Hoppus, who recently announced he was cancer-free, skipped across the stage, unable to stand still unless he was singing or addressing the crowd. He was captain of the ship, Delonge on quips and dick jokes. Their songs are short but memorable, and they ran through songs including “Feeling This” and “Aliens Exist,” played “I Miss You” and “Adam's Song” back to back (feeling this indeed), and saved “What's My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things'' for the end.

The band was flanked by two giant screens and one behind them, often displaying profanities or suggestions about either their or the crowd's moms. Their songs, like their set design, are childish, but they are also childlike. And their perspective is why so many people were and continue to be attracted to them in my opinion. They wrote a number of their hits in their early 20s, and they are often self-effacing, with a self doubting narrator. They are lost alongside you - “I Miss You” the tumult of young heartbreak, undiluted like the first time. Some of their songs like “Adam’s Song” are themselves nostalgic, for a purer youth, realizing that the world that was promised is kinda shitty, actually. Their music made it feel therapeutic to acknowledge this, as did gathering with nearly twenty thousand people, most of them wearing Blink-182 band merch, and screaming along to their lyrics. I’m glad they are back, because that is also where hope comes from.