Right now, the sky’s the limit for All Time Low. The four-piece
pop-punk giants are just achieving one milestone after another. The band’s new
album, “Future Hearts,” hit number one on the Billboard Rock chart and was the
number 2 album on the Billboard 200, making for the All Time Low’s highest
charting and selling week to date. On top of that, it recently finished a
headlining tour in the U.K. at a sold-out Wembley
Arena show in front of 14,000 people. Not a bad way to start the year.
The Maryland-based band — Alex Gaskarth,
Jack Barakat, Rian Dawson,
and Zack Merrick — have been one of the mainstays of pop-punk since its members
got together a decade ago. And now All Time Low is coming to storm the gates of
the Main Street Armory on Tuesday, May 19. City Newspaper talked with singer,
guitarist, and songwriter Alex Gaskarth about the
band’s successful year, musical progression, and its influence on a new
generation of pop-punk.
City: You’ve said before that this album — though it
doesn’t stray too far in sound from your last album, “Don’t Panic” — was the
next logical progression. To you, what did that mean while you were writing?
Alex Gaskarth: With “Don’t Panic,”
we just wanted to write a really straightforward rock record, and it was almost
a return to form for us. Creatively moving forward from that, we didn’t want to
repeat that formula. We knew that there were a lot of doors open for us to
explore, so we took the sound we had so far, and expanded on it and went in
some new directions with it. It makes the new record more diverse in a lot of
ways.
From a lyrical standpoint, what sorts of things were
inspiring you when the record was being written?
The record deals with all kinds of different topics. There
are some light hearted takes on relationships and things like that, but there’s
a lot of stuff that speaks to our fan base. And a lot of the record is about
finding happiness within yourself, pulling yourself out of a dark place, and
realizing that you’re responsible for your own well-being.
How was the experience of working with some older influences
like Joel Madden (of Good Charlotte) and Mark Hoppus
(of Blink 182) on the new album, as opposed to contemporaries like Vic Fuentes
(of Pierce the Veil) on the last record?
It’s just different creative minds. At the end of the day, I
don’t think we really looked at it as old versus new. I think with this record
— and the Mark Hoppus song especially — really speaks
to where we’ve come from and earning your stripes and taking your place among
your peers. Mark lending his voice solidified that idea. We’ve known Joel for
many years now, and we wanted to write something that married All Time Low with
what the Madden brothers were doing at the time. It turned out to be a really
fun song.
You guys have been around for a while now, so do you find
it sort of weird that a lot of new bands, like the ones you’re touring with now
would put you on the list of influences, along with the people just mentioned?
It’s a very weird concept for us to grasp. We don’t feel like
a band that falls in that category, and sometimes we have to stop and remind
ourselves that we’ve been at it for 11 years or so. It’s crazy to think we’ve
been able to be around that long and a new generation of bands take influence
from us. But it’s an honor to be thought of that way, and it’s cool to know
that bands that look up to us are out there.
When you look at a lot of these young pop-punk bands
emerging now, do you notice any big changes from when you guys started as a
band — in terms of music or themes in the genre?
I think there’s a different mentality with some of the new
acts coming in. Some of it is a bit less light hearted, it seems. I think the
in the 90’s and 2000’s there was a tongue in cheek approach to pop-punk, and
now you see bands coming from a different place. It’s a lot about where you
come from and who you want to be now. It’s taken on a bolder face in a lot of
ways, and I think hardcore had a big influence on pop-punk now, and there’s
this split between those bands and more pop influenced pop-punk bands.
You guys are pretty active on social media, and you create
a lot of video and photo content. What role do you think these things play in
connecting with your fan base, and do you think this is a natural progression
in music now?
I think social media has become a massive avenue for any
artist to connect to their fans. I don’t see a lot of artists that don’t do it
now. We kind of started with that in mind. When we started we had the MySpace page and a PureVolume
page and stuff like that, and it kind of evolved from there. We’ve been fully
on that train, and there’s no reason to not embrace it.
How was the experience of playing Wembley
Arena?
The fact that so many legendary bands have played there — Led
Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones — it was so cool to take that stage and do that
same thing. The fact that it sold out in advance was amazing as well.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2015.
