The new outfit from Blink-182's Tom Delonge is an unexpected slightly more mature progression from his surfy-guitar-pop days of Blink.

Delonge's distinctive voice is still the key linchpin of the band's sound though, and you can't help but think it might only be Blink fans that will be interested at first – they have a slight challenge ahead from that perspective.

He has clearly matured a bit, and the additional influences of former Offspring and Rocket from the Crypt drummer Atom Willard and bassist Ryan Simm of the Distillers, guitarist and fellow Box Car Racer David Kennedy from his sideline band, have strengthened the output from Delonge.

Splitting up from ‘182, fatherhood (he was unconvinced of the name Angels And Airwaves Delonge realised when you inverted the middle ‘A' of the title acronym it read Ava, the name of his baby daughter. Seems he reckoned there was an element of fate in that not to be ignored. Aw, shucks.

So, what do we have? A collection of songs clearly defined as AAA. The youthful-sounding vocal and energy of Tom and the high production values create an upbeat sounding overall vibe that somehow denies the melancholy sentiments in many of the lyrics.

I think Delonge was trying to move his emotions on a lot with this band, in a deliberate attempt to move away from Blink-182. There are a lot of dark references, he sounds like he has been doing a lot of soul searching and spent many a restless night penning lyric after lyric in bouts of inspiration.

It's not actually that bad.

Outstanding singles, to follow debut ‘The Adventure' are likely to be the very radio-friendly ‘Distraction' and ‘Do It For Me Now' and maybe ‘The War', which cranks up the guitars as a bit of a refreshing kick. Bonus track ‘The Machine' is great, as is the second bonus track – a live version of ‘Do it for Me Now' which shows the lads are not just set to be an album band. Some nice effects are used intermittently throughout the album.

Good luck to them.