I think the main thing here is blink used to be the punk rock Sherpas, but with California they have become the jackass millionaires who pay Sherpas to take them to the top of Mount Everest.

Up until dogs eating dogs you can see a linear rise of experimentality in blinks music. Sure, in the early years blink was making the poppiest of pop punk, but at that point no one was really making squeaky clean pop punk like blink was. Back then blink was cooking up some fresh juicy sounds that were fun and went along with the image MTV gave them of being hilariously obscene californian bro-dudes. So blink made the wave people surfed on it then the people moved on to a new wave, but waves don't die........

Everyone can agree the best part of California is the melodies. All the songs are nice and simple melodically--nothing crazy with a nice dose of repitivness. Even the people who loathe California have to like the melodies, but the main issue is the motherfucking production on this shit. California is going to hold up like a fine young cannibals album. The guitars are way over limited/smashed to hell. The drums are full dirt nasty patterns, but are so overly processed and filled with hit samples all of the life is taken out of them. Home is such a lonely place sounds like a Christina aguelara song gone rancid in the refrigerator. And the vocals are so autotuned/pitch corrected mark and Matt may as well be t-pain. These tracks are so undynamic and way more pop than punk--in the earlier days blinks music was more punk than pop, which is a major shift.

If blink recoded California a la McCartney I or with Holmes manning the boards while still collaborating with the goldfinger guy, I think the album still would have been a smash, but much more in line with the progression blinks music had been taking before tom left.