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All-American Rejects: The World Has Turned And Left Them Here
Alternative Press - Rob Ortenzi on 3/11/09 @ 12:11 PM - altpress.com
Story: Jonah Bayer
Photos: Carrie Schechter
"Are you ready for the Nausea show?"
The person asking this question is a shirtless guy with tangled dreadlocks, rolled-up pants and tattooed flesh. It seems like a valid inquiry, considering the conversation is taking place in a poorly lit space that resembles a boiler room. Although, the individual speaking is most definitely a fan of the aforementioned anarchist crust band, the location is not an ABC No Rio hardcore matinee. It's actually backstage at New York City's venerable Madison Square Garden and the person in question is drummer Chris Gaylor, whose band, the All-American Rejects, are performing their second night in a row here, opening for American arena-rock royalty, Bon Jovi. Right now, the title of AAR's new album, When The World Comes Down, seems more literal than anyone could have ever imagined.
By now all of us know the story of Stillwater, Oklahoma's little band that could and their rise from the confines of this Southern ranch state to the top of the pop charts with their second disc, Move Along. However, what's unclear is why it's taken three years for their third disc to come to fruition.
"Move Along's tour cycle sort of never ended, which contributed to this album taking so long," explains guitarist Mike Kennerty from a conference room at the band's hotel in Midtown Manhattan earlier in the day, a huge "Got Milk?" advertisement featuring the band eerily staring down at him. The Rejects essentially stopped touring on Christmas Day 2006, but over the past two years, they've still managed to play at least a show a month. Oh, and then there's the challenge of following up an album that sold two million copies.
"It was really important to get to have fun with this album and not get so caught up in the schedule," guitarist Nick Wheeler elaborates. "I mean, there's something to be said about momentum, but we really didn't want to sacrifice the music to appease that momentum."
The truth is that the band-Gaylor, Kennerty, Wheeler and bassist/frontman Tyson Ritter is upstairs in his room resting his vocal cords-haven't been buying helicopters and squandering their royalty checks in lieu of concentrating on their music. The group spent a little more than a year writing When The World Comes Down, an experience that included numerous writing retreats for Ritter and Wheeler, with stops at locales as varied as Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park, as well as a memorable session at a cabin in backwoods Georgia where the movie Deliverance was filmed.
That's not to say that the AARmy didn't find other ways to fill their schedules in between writing sessions and one-off concerts, the most notable being Wheeler and Ritter teaming up with Bon Jovi on MTV Unplugged. Kennerty and Gaylor ended up playing alongside Alkaline Trio bassist Dan Andriano on Ben Weasel's 2007 solo release These Ones Are Bitter (which Kennerty also produced). Ritter spent some time in front of cameras, scoring a memorable cameo on the television show House M.D., as well as a role in the recently released Anna Farris and Colin Hanks comedy The House Bunny, the latter of which took two months to complete. Then there was his electro-pop side-project, the Gnomans, essentially a vehicle to launch his clothing line, Butter The Clothes.
Then there was the recording process, which dragged on longer than usual because the band-for the first time in their career-simply weren't fully prepared for the sessions. "The process of recording this album was really exciting because sometimes we didn't know what we were doing," Wheeler explains, sporting perfectly spiked hair and a half-unbuttoned, patterned shirt which make him look like he actually could have been in Bon Jovi 20 years ago (and sharply in contrast to Kennerty and Gaylor, who look like they just wandered in from a Dillinger Four show). "Last time it was like, 'This is our second record, it's gotta count' and now it's like 'this is our third record, so it's really gotta count.' It's never just another record, at least not so far."
The question is, who exactly are the All-American Rejects' fans now that the pop world is dominated by younger bands like Metro Station and Boys Like Girls, outfits who seem to have literally sprung from high school hallways to the top of the charts? Consider that the Rejects canceled a handful of dates on last summer's Warped Tour in order to finish their new disc, yet still found the time to play a short string of shows with Bon Jovi. In many ways, AAR's relationship with the Warped scene seems akin to an adult revisiting his college stomping grounds-things are in some ways familiar, but also completely different. "I hope this doesn't reflect poorly on [AP]," Wheeler explains, "but my sister has a salon with music magazines in her waiting area, and when I pick up AP, I'm like, 'Who the fuck are these bands?'"
As a test, we pull out AP's recent Warped Tour cover to see if the Rejects can identify the tour's headliners. In all fairness, they do better than expected, despite mistaking Norma Jean singer Cory Brandan for Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas. [Harsh, dudes...-radio-hating ed.] This honest error is a symptom of something bigger, which the band realized after they played the Bamboozle Left festival last April.
"Doing that show was like this culture shock to me. It was all neon colors and bling and hip-hop-infused emo and I officially felt out of it," Kennerty says. "If anything, I think the fact that we are exactly the same makes me feel good because I feel like that stuff has a really short attention span and we're not going to fall into some trend. To me it seems like all these people with swooped hair are the ones that are going to be forgotten."
The last time the All-American Rejects released a record, YouTube was still in its nascent stage and half of America hadn't even heard of MySpace, so it'd be impossible to compete with the hype surrounding the next group of fresh-faced pop-punk hopefuls. Instead, with When The World Comes Down, the band decided to do what they've always done: Be themselves and write the most honest music they can. At presstime, the band had four songs available to play AP, although it remains to be seen what will be included on the actual CD. "Gives You Hell" is an upbeat track that's not as guitar-driven as the band's earlier work and is the type of love song most of us have become accustomed to hearing on mainstream radio-barring the gang vocals during the final chorus. "Back To Me" is a stripped-down, piano-driven track that showcases Ritter's vocal prowess; "Wind Blows" features orchestral synths, syncopated drums and ambient background instrumentation; and, finally, "Mona Lisa" is an apocalyptic acoustic track that has Ritter promising "you can sit beside me when the world comes down" over an inventive arrangement of guitars, drums and piano.
"To sum up the record, it's got some of the hardest stuff and some of the softest stuff we've ever recorded," Wheeler surmises. "There's a couple of weird detours along the way."
Back at MSG, fans are still filing into the cavernous arena as the band start their set. This time, the Rejects don't hesitate in owning the crowd as if it was their show. While the band are met with enthusiastic applause playing hits like "Swing, Swing" and "Dirty Little Secret," what's really important is how much fun the four of them are having. Kennerty flails around like he might topple into the crowd at any point while Wheeler flawlessly showcases variations on his array of foot-on-the-monitor rockstar moves. "New York City still makes dreams come true, baby!" Ritter proclaims before the band launch into a charged rendition of "The Last Song," that's so powerful, it's hard to believe the walls of the arena can contain it. Clearly, anyone who thinks the Rejects have gone soft over the past few years hasn't seen them lately.
"That was so much fun," Tyson Ritter says post-show from the labyrinthine bowels of the Garden. "It's like catching fish and I feel like we're reeling them in." He's just been dragged away from hanging backstage with Catherine and Allison Pierce of the Pierces (who appear on the new song "Another Heart Calls"), but he's so energized from the set, he doesn't seem to mind.
"Move Along was a really big record for us and we have to trump that this time around. I take that responsibility very seriously," he explains. "When I was 20 it was me against 'the Man,' so to speak-the Man being our A&R guy, our label, [our] management even-telling us it wasn't good enough and that's a tough pill to swallow. Now it's me versus myself, because everyone's like 'It's done, let's go,' and I'm like, 'it's not good enough.'"
This newfound perspective isn't limited to Ritter's opinion on the band's music, but his general outlook on life, as well. "When I was younger, I used to get so hurt by people who didn't like our band, but now I don't care as much because we have people that love us and we love them just as much and we want that feeling to continue," he elaborates, citing a run-in Yellowcard frontman Ryan Key as an example of what the band don't want to become. "When Yellowcard were huge, we were on our off-cycle for our first record writing. When we did Warped Tour that year, I congratulated their singer and that dude gave me the biggest shaft of my life," he explains with a sigh. "I wasn't pissed, but it was almost like an affirmation. I was like, 'I'm so glad I'm not like that' because, you know, history plays itself out."
Ritter and the rest of his band don't mind if the All-American Rejects are your guilty pleasure as long as you're listening. And judging from the sound of When The World Comes Down, chances are you will be.
"I don't know where we fit, but we're still here and people find a place for us," Ritter resigns, sweat glistening on his famous cheekbones. "You might hate my band, but you'll fucking hum that melody when you walk away-and if you do that, I won. Even if you hate it, I won."
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The All-American Rejects are amazing. I love their new album!