Back in 2016, when the then-upcoming Blink-182 album California got announced, I rediscovered the band +44 and its only album, When Your Heart Stops Beating. +44 was cooked up by Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker after Blink-182 broke up for the first time in 2005. This record came out in 2006, but I don’t think I ever heard it until a year or two later. I think a lot of people thought +44 would be the next Blink-182, but this album never made much of a splash.
It’s… fine. It has its moments, but all the while, it’s nothing special. Unsurprisingly, Travis’ drumming is the most entertaining part of the record. He really does have an obvious energy when he comes up with his parts, even if the rest of the songwriting isn’t terribly remarkable.
I might explore this album a bit more in the future. It’s a fascinating moment in history; since Blink-182 has since gotten back together, +44 is now (basically) defunct, and I suspect maybe people who are really into the pop punk scene regard the project as a curious piece of history.
Anyhoo, here’s the first song from the album, “Lycanthrope.” By all accounts, the tune appears to be about Blink-182 breaking up, but I have no idea why it’s named after werewolves.
I transcribed the entire song when I was a freshman, but I can’t quite remember what it was about the tune that inspired me to notate it all down. I dunno… but I have it, so I guess I’ll share it. Think of it as a Travis Barker time capsule.
The main point of rhythmic interest concerns the ending of the phrases; notice the emphasis on the “+” after 4. As such, Travis uses a lot of four-note and six-note patterns to fill into the next section. He may have taken some inspiration from more standard triplet fills, repurposed for this tune:
During the chorus, Travis uses a cool little ride bell joint, followed up by a hip kick and snare pattern:
Travis’ playing is very dynamic; he has a knack for creating very engaging grooves, keeping things varied but not too frantic. In this case, you can hear him doing a bit of a call-and-response thing with the vocals, playing two measures with the lead vocals and two measures with the backing part.
I had some trouble figuring out if Travis was crashing on his ride during the main riff, or if he was using a crash cymbal, so as I often do in these situations, I turned to live videos. Some of them weren’t much help: Travis had just gotten surgery on his right arm after recording for the album was done, so on all of the publicity shows I could find, he’s actually playing one-handed. I found some fan videos from the tour, and despite the fidelity, I could make out Travis using his Sweet Ride for the main riff.
As an absolutely pointless piece of trivia, I discovered that Blink-182 Chile shared a video of this tune with just bass, vocals, and drums. I had no idea there was an audience for such a thing. It’s also kind of funny that this got posted on a Blink-182 channel; perhaps a tacit admission that +44 is pretty much the same project as the current Blink?
I thought about trimming down the sheet music since the second verse and chorus are pretty much the same as before. But since I already had it down… why not? The most exciting part is probably the bridge, which is a quasi-drum feature that has Travis dishing out some fun 16th note runs:
I think I hear a splash cymbal during this part. I know Travis has one in his setup, but I’m not entirely sure if he’s using it. Trying to focus on that much detail is very tedious, so I’m not gonna stress about it. If it’s a thin 16-inch crash instead of a splash, we’ll survive.
