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https://open.spotify.com/album/1kwAv74rVTTGMpawGsXtiE?si=grXfUD9cSeqN0UZ4D_-B7Q
All Time Low is a veteran band in the truest sense of the word- they've been around for 14 years (since 2006), they played a huge role in popularizing their genre of pop-punk, and they have been a key influence for countless younger bands in the generation after them.
Wake Up, Sunshine is their eighth album (not counting a few live albums and extended editions), and the guys are all over 30 now, so one can imagine that they don't want to stay within the same musical box forever. They ventured out into more alternative and pop sounds with their last two releases, Future Hearts and Last Young Renegade, and I feel like this album does a good job of marrying the classic All Time Low sensibilities with new influences.
Being a die-hard ATL fan for approximately a fourth of my entire life, it's easy to pick out elements in the new music that they've used and perfected throughout the years, so it's also a bit like a walk down memory lane.
Some Kind Of Disaster kicks us off, hearkening back to Nothing Personal, 2009's punky release characterized by simple verses that explode into a loud, catchy chorus. The regular switching between quiet vocal effects and driving guitars keeps the dynamics interesting, and those choruses are great for some good old fashioned headbanging.
Sleeping In is next, and it's the classic installment on every All Time Low album: a quick, lighthearted, witty story about hooking up. Seriously, there's one of these on every tracklist, so it's kind of an in-joke as well as a fluff track. This song has major Don't You Go vibes from 2015's album, Future Hearts.
Following in the fun, pop-influenced vein of Future Hearts, Getaway Green gives us a tale of new, exciting love that colors life in “getaway green in a world of black and white”. The title phrase confused me for a while, but then I realized it's comparing the green of “Costa Mesa traffic lights” to the freedom to get away from real life to somewhere more exciting.
Melancholy Kaleidoscope is an awful lot of syllables for a title, much less the repeated phrase of a chorus, but Alex Gaskarth fits it in there somehow, and quite well. The lyrics on this one are a standout to me, spinning a well-placed metaphor about how the singer is seeking distractions or a break from being on the stage of life and having to perform. The whole kaleidoscope thing comes in when it says, “it's high time you shake things up and get the picture in your head right.”
Trouble Is- hey guys, your love for Blink-182 is showing. This song fits right in stylistically with the newer Blink sound from their 2017 album, California. Syncopated drum work and straight, Mark Hoppus-style vocals punctuate this catchy tune about being stuck on someone for good- “trouble is, you're part of me.”
Wake Up, Sunshine is our title track. It sounds like an early 2000's TV show theme song, and I'm not mad about it. It gives a punky edge to the sweet sentiment “wake up, sunshine, somebody loves you.” There's a break in the action for a slowed down bridge, then it's back to business.
It's obvious that Monsters (feat. blackbear) is there to be an eyebrow-raiser on the tracklist: an old pop punk band and a modern rapper? blackbear samples lines from another one of his own songs, there's a bunch of different vocals, and honestly it sounds kind of messy to me. They do have a lyrical call back to Dirty Laundry, a track from 2017's Last Young Renegade, which I always love, but this track is a miss for me.
Pretty Venom is an interlude that makes up for its lackluster predecessor; it's definitely one of my favorite tracks on this album! It has a fuzzy, cassette-tape sound, with a much more slow, stripped down feel than All Time Low is used to. It's a melancholy, calm spot in the middle of this album, and it gives Alex Gaskarth's vocals a chance to really shine.
Favorite Place (feat. The Band CAMINO) brings the mood back up for a song about star-crossed lovers that feels a lot like Six Feet Under The Stars from 2007's So Wrong It's Right. In an interview with Kerrang, All Time Low said they had written the song and thought it sounded a lot like The Band CAMINO's music, so they just called them up and asked if they wanted to collaborate on the track! It's got some cute lines that ATL is great about in their love songs, like “you're everything I love about the things I hate in me” and “so come on, come on, come over now and fix me with your grace, cause I'm not too far and you're my favorite place.”
Safe is on my list of top songs from this album. All Time Low has plenty of songs about being young and partying, new love and heartbreak, and mental & emotional struggles. But one genre they do best are songs that are just there to make you feel lighter, like you're okay, and to remind you that everything is going to be alright. Those songs have always been special to me, ever since I discovered their music as a lonely teenager, and this one is no exception- it does make me feel safe.
So put the car in drive, and don't stop running 'til you're long gone
You're gonna be alright if you just stop thinking it over
Just put the car in drive, and don't stop running 'til you're long gone
They'll never slow you down if you don't look over your shoulder
January Gloom (Seasons, Part 1) was written about experiencing the gloomy, winter doldrums of seasonal depression, and let me just say, living in winter-five-months-out-of-the-year Michigan, I FEEL THIS. The song says to blame the depression on the weather, and asks a loved one who is “like the sunshine in the lazy days of June,” “can you save me from this January gloom?”
In the aforementioned Kerrang interview, Alex Gaskarth himself said that Clumsy “could have have still fit on 2009's Nothing Personal”, so that one's not even my opinion, it's straight from the writer's mouth! The lead guitar tones are a definite callback to that era of ATL's music, and this is one of my favorites to play loud and sing along to.
Glitter and Crimson is a sweet love song between two people who, for whatever reason, can't be together like they wish they could. It's a ballad with a powerful bridge that marks this as an emotional moment in the album. The musical sound is very different from The Edge Of Tonight off of Future Hearts, but the emotion behind it feels the same: holding out hope for love.
Summer Daze (Seasons, Part 2) is just that: a sunny, summer rock song about a spontaneous fling, and I love it. There's even a literary reference: “but nothing gold can stay, you told me so” comes from a Robert Frost poem. Who knew All Time Low were well-read as well as musically talented?
The closer, Basement Noise, is mid-tempo and soaked in nostalgia. It's simple, sweet, and feels like a graduation song. The lyrics reflect on how the four band members came from being “just stupid boys making basement noise” to being a world-famous band in the middle of their second decade of making music together. It's a perfect outro to the record, and it proves that the guys have never forgotten their roots as the high school pop-punk band from Baltimore.
Thanks for reading!
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