The Adventure The build-up to Angels & Airwaves debut LP, We Don’t Need To Whisper, was a contentious combination of hurt feelings (due to the sudden break up of Blink-182), excessive hype (mostly from Tom DeLonge about this new band he was starting), and mystery. The record was produced by Tom DeLonge in his home studio in San Diego, California, and the hype train surrounding the spacey rock found on We Don’t Need To Whisper made almost everyone curious about this new band. The band was rounded out by Box Car Racer guitarist David Kennedy, drummer Atom Willard, and bassist Ryan Sinn. I can vividly remember my anticipation of wanting to wrap my ears around this LP for the first time at midnight of May 23rd, 2006, and be transported into a world that DeLonge was describing as “life-changing.” With the lights out in my room, I started the process of listening to this album from front to back, the way it was intended, but I couldn’t help but think that as good as the album was, my expectations of hearing something life-altering were way overblown. We Don’t Need To Whisper still holds up to this day as a solid album, it features some truly incredible songs, and yet I can also see why most critics didn’t quite “get” what DeLonge was going for here.
One of the main detractors from We Don’t Need To Whisper is that it takes a bit to get going in the early stages. The opener of “Valkyrie Missile” is filled with atmospheric elements and radio chatter from a space mission of sorts, and yet it never really goes anywhere. It’s got a combination of U2 and The Police type of guitar build-ups, and it isn’t until after four and a half minutes of this sound that we finally hear DeLonge’s voice cut through the mix. “Distraction” bounces along over the synths and drums from Atom Willard with lyrics related to wars and the overall theme of love being the distraction to all of the negativity and violence in the world. It was a cool concept in theory, and it mostly does the job of building up to one of the first singles released from the set in “Do It For Me Now.” The opening guitar riff was straight out of The Edge’s (U2) playbook, and the track is largely built around this spacey riff to help set the stage for the anthemic chorus from DeLonge.
”The Adventure” was the lead single to be released from We Don’t Need To Whisper and it’s still one of the best songs in the discography of Angels & Airwaves. The song’s strengths comes in its build up in the instruments in the verses, DeLonge’s energetic delivery of his lyrics about space travel and human connection, and the refrain of “life’s waiting to begin” made most a believer in Tom’s approach to songwriting for this band. I can still remember hearing this song for the first time, and I do remember thinking that it was one of the best songs Tom DeLonge had ever written.
The middle section of We Don’t Need To Whisper wanders in the darkness with songs like “A Little’s Enough” and “The Gift”, while the song that fits between the two tracks, “The War”, was released as a single for good reason. It has a great beat from Willard, while DeLonge’s epic storytelling largely pays off here. “It Hurts” seems a bit too “one note” for its own good, and it kind of trudges along to the finish line. “Good Day” is pretty similar in that it has the build up of a song that wants to explode into a vibrant chorus, but it instead feels comfortable in being a mid-tempo ballad that broods along to the end. “Start The Machine” was a bit of an odd closer with the toy piano type of sound in the early stages, and then then repetitious lyrics from Tom DeLonge crooning, “If you say it, I will listen.”
Most of the songs found on We Don’t Need To Whisper could have benefited from a bit of trimming down in the atmospheric build-ups, but the record as a whole still remains my favorite thing to come out of the project of Angels & Airwaves. As the band continued on subsequent releases, DeLonge and his bandmates began to get into a solid groove, but I have to admit that the initial charm of their debut still resonates today. Possibly a victim of its overblown hype from DeLonge, We Don’t Need To Whisper was still a pretty strong debut from an artist going through a contentious period of his life. I can see why so many fans of Angels & Airwaves still point to this record as this band’s most honest and best work to date, and it deserves another look today ahead of its 20th anniversary.