That attempt to cultivate a more serious image of himself really began, he says, with his side-project Box Car Racer and their 2002, debut full-length. A year later, blink put out their eponymous – and, again, much more serious and mature – self-titled album. And when the trio went on hiatus in 2005, Tom channelled all of his creative energy into the incredibly poignant songs of Angels & Airwaves: the space-obsessed band that, since leaving blink in 2015, has become his main musical preoccupation. All of that stems from not just his creative restlessness, but to buck against preconceptions and preconceived ideas of who he is as both a person and an artist.
“I’m always going to try things that people think I can’t do,” he says. “That came probably right when I started Angels & Airwaves, or maybe a little bit with Box Car Racer. When I did Box Car Racer, that was the first big challenge to myself – can I make a great post-hardcore punk record that’s totally different to what I’ve been doing when I don’t have my entire band or another songwriter to rely on and fall back on? Can I do this on my own? Can I accept this challenge?’ And I proved to myself that I did pretty good and that I can do more of that. So then when I did Angels & Airwaves, I did it again, where I was like, ‘Can I make a band that’s completely different than anything I’ve done and is unashamedly putting its heart and soul out there of what we believe in and what we want our world to look like?’”
He was, of course, aware that may well be jarring to fans of his other band’s more scatological stuff, but he was willing to take that risk – especially as blink going on hiatus meant he had the time to do so.
“I remember thinking,” he says, “that if I do this – if I start singing about consciousness and love and all these different things – people aren’t going to totally get it. People are going to wonder why this rebellious kid in a rebellious punk band is now being a lovey-dovey. But I knew that this was where the world was going. Now, every alternative band that you hear on satellite radio is singing about love and whatever. When Angels started, we were kind of the only punk/indie rock band in the scene, and from the generation I’m a part of, that was doing it. So I knew that it was going to be difficult for some people, but it ended up being something that I felt really proud of.”