The Dream Walker is the fifth studio album by alternative rock bandAngels & Airwaves, released on December 9, 2014, through To the Stars. On October 31, the band released their first single from the album, "The Wolfpack", via PureVolume. On Monday, December 8, 2014, the album was streamed exclusively in its entirety with Rolling Stone. This is the band's first album to feature drummer Ilan Rubin, the first since We Don't Need to Whisper not to feature bassist Matt Wachter and the only album not to feature guitarist David Kennedy. It was recorded entirely by DeLonge and Rubin, who share songwriting and instrumental duties. On May 4, 2016 the band released a new album consisting entirely of demos from The Dream Walker studio sessions including older takes and five previously unreleased tracks. Originally intended to be titled Poet, The Dream Walker proved to be a remarkable shift in style from progressive styles to a rawer sounding alternative rock.
Production
The album is one part of a multimedia project that will include a short film, comic books, a graphic novel, videos and animations that will all tie in to a central character known as Poet Anderson. The first single available from The Dream Walker was "Paralyzed", released on YouTube on October 7, 2014. Several weeks later the second single, "The Wolfpack" was released on Halloween. The music video for "The Wolfpack" premiered on YouTube a week later on November 7, directed by Mark Eaton. The third and fourth singles released prior to the release of the album were "Bullets in the Wind", on November 17, and "Tunnels", on December 1. The short film that coincides with the album, Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker, premiered on November 14 at the Toronto InternationalShort Film Festival, for which it won Best Animation. Tom Delonge and Ilan Rubin were the only musicians to play on the album, with David Kennedy and Eddie Breckenridge not recording for unknown reasons. Kennedy and Breckenridge only appear in the music video for Tunnels.
The Dream Walker received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 66, based on 6 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" feedback. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic rated the album three out of five stars, writing that it has "more texture and dimension than Love and, ultimately, it's that expansiveness that gives the album character instead of the convoluted cross-platform narratives."
Commercial performance
The Dream Walker debuted at number 39 on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of 19,088 copies in the United States.
