Blink-182: Blink-182

By REBECCA BARRY

(Herald rating: * * * *)

If old dogs can learn new tricks, Blink-182 must have been to obedience school. The San Diego pranksters behind Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket have taken a more serious approach to their sixth album, combining a darker appreciation of punk with -- cough -- meaningful lyrics.

And while they haven't abandoned the pop just yet -- excellent opening track Feeling This is the obligatory high-school anthem of sexual longing -- they have reinvented themselves as a tight, original and mature punk band, more Jimmy Eat World than Bloodhound Gang.

Romantic pianos float over I Miss You, roving bass lines and unconventional percussion add tension to Violence and The Fallen Interlude is a hypnotic, sample-laden electro experiment that sounds like it was composed in Wellington. But the biggest surprise is the string-soaked All of This featuring Robert Smith of the Cure, whose doleful style would have once been classed as their polar opposite.

Hopefully their fans have grown up too.

Label: Geffen