What is love? Is it two people with a strong affection toward each other? Is it how we feel about our family, our pets and our friends? Love is the fundamental need for human connection; love is a form of limitless hope.
The alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves (AVA) has explored the meaning of love, and through their journey they created two albums and a feature film. The first album in this series, “Love”, was released in 2010. It has the same sound and energy as previous AVA albums, but the lyrics are deeper and more thought out.
Four of the songs from the “Love” album,”Hallucinations”, “Epic Holiday”, “Clever Love”, and “Soul Survivor (…2012)”, have been made into short films that have four different themes. The four themes, communication, isolation, relationship, and fate vs. destiny, are all part of the feature film “Love”, which was the next release of the love series.
The movie “Love’s” world premiere was on Feb. 2, 2011 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Then, on Aug. 10, the movie was shown in about 460 theaters across America in a one night showing. The movie was released on DVD in early November, along with the final part of the Love series, the album, “Love II.”
“It doesn’t even qualify as a movie, it’s more like an experience,” said senior Christian Andersen.
The movie is about an astronaut, Lee Miller, who is sent to the International Space Station. He loses contact with earth and becomes stranded in orbit by himself. He finds a journal of a Civil War captain from 1864. Through Miller, Angels & Airwaves worked with producer William Eubank to create a story that shows that everyone has a story to tell and something greater to leave behind.
“It really puts life into perspective, all of the problems that we face day to day are tiny compared to the rest of the universe,” Andersen said.
The movie was everything they made it out to be. Lead singer of AVA, Tom DeLonge, took part in a live interview that was shown after the movie on Aug. 10, and he explained a lot about what he wanted people to get out of this movie.
“I think a lot of us are just passengers on this little pale blue dot, this little thing so insignificant that you can feel the blackness. And when you start to think about how little we mean to the universe, you start to realize how important we are to each other,” DeLonge said during the interview. He was talking about one of the themes of “Love”, as well as the single, “Anxiety,” released from “Love II” on Aug. 10.
“Love” is not for everyone. It takes concentration, and an appreciation for a different style of music. Most AVA fans will love it, but unless you are looking for a deep story about human connection, you should probably stick to Delonge’s previous punk-rock band, Blink-182.
“AVA has more technical guitar playing and deeper lyrics. Blink is more punk rock,” Andersen said.
Whether you choose to watch and listen to Love or not, it will make you think things through.
Andersen said, “It’s a great movie on so may levels, and the music from both albums are amazing … It really makes you rethink life.”