When Your Heart Stops Beating

When Your Heart Stops Beating Explicit Version CD: Former blink-182 co-founders Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker have reunited under the aegis of a new band, (+44), and will release their much anticipated album, When Your Heart Stops Beating on Interscope Records. The album is produced by Hoppus and Barker and executive produced by long-time blink-182 producer Jerry Finn. Recruited for their new journey as (+44) pronounced Plus (+44) Shane Gallagher (The Nervous Return) and Craig Fairbaugh (Transplants, The Forgotten, Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards) join singer-bassist Hoppus and drummer-keyboardist Barker and pick up where the popular, multi-platinum-selling band blink-182 left off after splitting in late 2004. We were twothirds of blink-182, so we're not afraid of sounding like ourselves, says Hoppus. We're not divorcing ourselves from the past, but we are pushing beyond the past. We're progressing like musicians should. Barker agrees: Mark and I have a natural chemistry after playing together for so long and it's only gotten stronger. This band is a continuation of blink-182 but it's also different. For a long time, blink-182 was an underdog. I like being the underdog again.

A few years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine the members of Blink 182 occupied with anything that didn't involve poop jokes and pixilated private parts. Now Tom DeLonge is channeling early U2 with Angels and Airwaves while former bandmates Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker have reunited as +44, another numerical band named after the international calling code for the United Kingdom. The twitchy punk rhythms, adolescent accented vocals, and blockbuster choruses of their former outfit remain, as does producer Jerry Finn, but songs like "Baby Come On" and the spooky "Little Death" show the musicians finally delivering the substance that was promised on Blink 182's self-titled 2003 release. "A little death makes life more meaningful," Hoppus sings on that latter. --Aidin Vaziri